AI provider OpenAI has tried in vain to register its name in the European Union as a trademark for relevant services and products. After the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) and its Fifth Board of Appeal, the General Court of the European Union also ruled against OpenAI (OpenAI v European Union Intellectual Property Office, Ref. T-555/25). Terms that describe a relevant offer from the perspective of the relevant target group may not be registered as a trademark. It is not case sensitive.
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For example, APPLE cannot be registered as a trademark for fruit because apple describes apples in English, and no one else could offer apples. However, as a brand for records, Apple is unproblematic because the word does not generally describe sound recordings. Therefore, there are numerous classes for brands for products and services. This allows different trademark owners to use the same trademark for different classes; To stick with the example: A company can register the trademark “Apple” for sound recordings, another for ICT, but no one for fruit.
OpenAI wanted to register OPENAI for classes 9, 38, 42 and 45. Class 38 is for telecommunications, which the EUIPO had nothing against. However, classes 9, 42 and 45 cover, among other things, software and its interfaces (API), databases, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, scientific and technical services, research, software integration, platform as a service or systems for identity verification.
Descriptive term, not a made-up word
The EUIPO has identified the English-speaking population as the relevant target group, both private individuals and professionals. The applicant had no objection to this. The authority then determined that open AI is understood in English as “freely accessible artificial intelligence”. If this expression were registered as an EU trademark, no one else in the EU would be able to offer freely accessible AI under this easily understandable term. Therefore, registration in classes 9, 42 and 45 is inadmissible (ref. 018888426).
In addition, OPENAI is not sufficiently distinctive, which also makes registration impossible. After OpenAI complained, the EUIPO Board of Appeal confirmed the rejection (ref. R0190/2025-5), whereupon the AI company went to the EU court.
OpenAI argues in vain
OpenAI pointed to over 30 successful registrations with other authorities, including in Great Britain and Singapore. According to the EU court, this has no bearing on the matter because the EUIPO has to decide according to European law.
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The court also rejects the argument that open ai and OPENAI are two different things: the fact that OpenAI writes the trademark together and does not use spaces or a hyphen does not make the term a fantasy name. In general, the target group does not deal in detail with such grammatical analyzes in everyday life.
The argument that the English word open has numerous other meanings also failed. According to established case law, this already solves the problem one possible meaning of the registration ban.
Because freely accessible AI can be used for products and services in classes 9, 42 and 45, the term OPENAI is descriptive and cannot be registered for it. The court does not address the question of distinctiveness because one reason for exclusion is sufficient.
In addition, OpenAI complained that the EUIPO had indeed registered trademarks in similar cases involving other applicants. That didn’t work in court either: OpenAI cannot enforce an illegal registration just because an authority has previously made illegal decisions. In addition, the examples presented were directly approved; neither the Appeal Chamber nor the court are bound by decisions made by individual EUIPO employees.
Second chance
However, the matter is not hopeless for OpenAI. On the one hand, it can still appeal to try to get the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to change the decision. On the other hand, there is another way to register an EU trademark: special prominence. If a trademark has acquired distinctiveness through its actual use, it can be registered even if it was not previously distinctive or generally described products or services.
However, this prominence must be proven, and that for all member states. Because this is time-consuming, the EUIPO only carries out such procedures after the rejection of normal registrations has become legally binding.
The court decision theoretically only affects registration as an EU trademark in the EU register; OpenAI could therefore try to register national trademarks with individual EU member states. However, their authorities will check twice as closely in light of the court decision.
Word and image trademarks, where a specially designed lettering is registered, should be considered separately from the word mark. Word-image trademarks can certainly be registered with descriptive terms, which OpenAI has also done successfully. This only protects the specific specific design; As long as there is no risk of confusion, competitors may use other designs with the same letters.
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