USPTO

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USPTO refuses Tesla Robotaxi trademark as “merely descriptive”

Cars, cybercab, robotaxi, Tesla, USPTO / /

“We are an AI, robotics company,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced last April. Despite the fact that the company’s revenues are overwhelmingly derived from selling new electric vehicles, such prosaic activities hold no luster for the boss. Instead, Tesla’s future, according to Musk, depends upon a (claimed) sub-$30,000 driverless two-seater, revealed to the world last October in a staged demonstration on a film set. But Musk’s plans just hit a snag: The company must find some new names.

As spotted by Sean O’Kane at TechCrunch, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has informed Tesla that it will not be allowed to trademark the word “robotaxi” to describe the vehicle. According to the USPTO, the term is far too generic. Indeed, a Google n-gram search shows a steady growth in the use of “robotaxi” starting more than a decade ago.

According to the USPTO, the term is merely descriptive. The agency cites evidence from Wikipedia, The Verge, and the Amazon-backed autonomous vehicle startup Zoox in its denial of Tesla’s trademark application.

A Tesla Cybercab prototype at a Tesla store in San Jose, California, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the robotaxi, which has no steering wheel or pedals, could cost less than $30,000 and

Maybe they should just have called it the Teslapod. Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Tesla could challenge this decision, but it would have to show the USPTO all the product’s marketing materials, brochures, and manuals that intend to use the name. If those aren’t available, Tesla must explain to the patent and trademark office’s satisfaction how this product will differ from others, with detailed specifics, not generalities. Tesla must also explain whether the car features robotic systems and whether any of Tesla’s competitors use “robo,” “robot,” or “robotic” to describe their own goods and services—the fact that Zoox refers to its autonomous pods as robotaxis will be very inconvenient for Tesla.

It’s not the first time that Tesla has been accused of a lack of originality. Alcon Entertainment sued Warner Brothers and Tesla after it refused them permission and adamantly objected to WB’s and Tesla’s attempt to link the vehicle with vehicles seen in Blade Runner 2049. Although Tesla attempted to get the case dismissed, in April, the court ordered the parties to enter into mediation.

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US says AI models can’t hold patents

AI, AI ethics, Biz & IT, copyright, machine learning, patents, US Patent and Trademark Office, USPTO / /

Robot inventors dismayed —

Inventors must be human, but there’s still a condition where AI can officially help.

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An illustrated concept of a digital brain, crossed out.

On Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published guidance on inventorship for AI-assisted inventions, clarifying that while AI systems can play a role in the creative process, only natural persons (human beings) who make significant contributions to the conception of an invention can be named as inventors. It also rules out using AI models to churn out patent ideas without significant human input.

The USPTO says this position is supported by “the statutes, court decisions, and numerous policy considerations,” including the Executive Order on AI issued by President Biden. We’ve previously covered attempts, which have been repeatedly rejected by US courts, by Dr. Stephen Thaler to have an AI program called “DABUS” named as the inventor on a US patent (a process begun in 2019).

This guidance follows themes previously set by the US Copyright Office (and agreed upon by a judge) that an AI model cannot own a copyright for a piece of media and that substantial human contributions are required for copyright protection.

Even though an AI model itself cannot be named an inventor or joint inventor on a patent, using AI assistance to create an invention does not necessarily disqualify a human from holding a patent, as the USPTO explains:

“While AI systems and other non-natural persons cannot be listed as inventors on patent applications or patents, the use of an AI system by a natural person(s) does not preclude a natural person(s) from qualifying as an inventor (or joint inventors) if the natural person(s) significantly contributed to the claimed invention.”

However, the USPTO says that significant human input is required for an invention to be patentable: “Maintaining ‘intellectual domination’ over an AI system does not, on its own, make a person an inventor of any inventions created through the use of the AI system.” So a person simply overseeing an AI system isn’t suddenly an inventor. The person must make a significant contribution to the conception of the invention.

If someone does use an AI model to help create patents, the guidance describes how the application process would work. First, patent applications for AI-assisted inventions must name “the natural person(s) who significantly contributed to the invention as the inventor,” and additionally, applications must not list “any entity that is not a natural person as an inventor or joint inventor, even if an AI system may have been instrumental in the creation of the claimed invention.”

Reading between the lines, it seems the contributions made by AI systems are akin to contributions made by other tools that assist in the invention process. The document does not explicitly say that the use of AI is required to be disclosed during the application process.

Even with the published guidance, the USPTO is seeking public comment on the newly released guidelines and issues related to AI inventorship on its website.

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