*The information below is not legal advice.
Whether you need a new design, a new name, or you already have one in mind, AI is a tool you can use to flesh out your trademark ideas and create different renditions. As a prudent business owner, you’re likely wondering who owns a trademark that AI helped create. Well, we’re here to answer your legal questions concerning AI and trademarks. (Don’t worry; AI didn’t write this post!)
Who can own a trademark?
According to trademark law, a trademark is a mark “in use in commerce” or “intended to be used in commerce.” Further, an applicant applying for a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) must be a natural person (e.g. a human), a juristic person (e.g. corporations, partnerships, associations, etc.), or a governmental body (e.g. nations, states, municipalities, etc.). So what does this all mean?
First, it means that AI, at this time, cannot own a trademark because it is not a human, business entity, or governmental body. It also means that you can use AI to create a trademark and register yourself or your business as the owner. There’s only one caveat, and it’s an important one. Whatever trademark you create with the help of AI cannot be “confusingly similar” to any other trademark being used or owned by another because that would be trademark infringement.
To determine whether a newly created mark resembles any other trademarks, you can perform a search for any similar trademarks using the search engine provided by the USPTO, Google, and social media. Keep in mind this is a very basic search, and you will have more thorough results when conducting a search with a trademark attorney. Trademark attorneys have the ability to perform more thorough searches using specialized trademark search engines. A trademark attorney, like Andrea Sager (ranked #22 out of 40,000 trademark attorneys in the US), can also answer the sometimes complicated question of whether another mark is “confusingly similar” or not.
How to Use AI to Create a Trademark
Here’s one way you might enter a prompt into the popular AI system, ChatGPT, for trademark ideas:
“Create a unique trademark that uses a dog and a doghouse for a business named Alexis’s Home for Dogs Away from Home.”
Here’s ChatGPT 4o Mini’s response:
The more specific the prompt, the more tailored and descriptive the AI model’s responses will be. Here’s ChatGPT’s response after adding specifics like demographic information:
Remember, after using suggestions given by ChatGPT or any other AI model, it is important to check whether the resulting trademark resembles any other trademarks being used or owned by another person for similar goods or services. Sometimes there are obviously similar marks, but if that is not the case, we recommend a trademark attorney, like Andrea Sager to provide further clarity.
Staying Up to Date with Legal Developments
Although trademark law is not as fast-moving as some other areas of the law, the development of AI is shifting things faster than before. Keep up to date by following the Legalpreneur blogs while we monitor these legal developments.
*The information in this article is not legal advice*
