Google, which is mired in antitrust litigation, has encountered another lawsuit. This time it’s related to the generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool Gemini. On the evening of Wednesday, September 11, local time, GeminiData, a small company in the field of generative AI in San Francisco, filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of the Northern District of California, accusing Google of trademark infringement of its AI chat tool Gemini. It requested the federal court to order Google to pay monetary damages and permanently prohibit Google from using its intellectual property in AI-related products.
In February this year, Google announced that it would rename its benchmark ChatGPT robot Bard, launched in March last year, to Gemini. Comments at the time said that Bard had been driven by a large language model (LLM) called Gemini since December last year, and the name change was reasonable.
According to GeminiData's prosecution documents, Google's previous application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to register the Gemini trademark was rejected on the grounds that it might cause confusion with GeminiData's rights. Shortly after the USPTO rejected Google's request, an "anonymous" entity contacted GeminiData to inquire about obtaining trademark rights. GeminiData said it eventually suspected the entity was acting on behalf of Google and ceased contact.
GeminiData said that the company does not have a "monopoly on the development of generative AI tools," but it does have "exclusive rights" to its brand. The company received trademark and service mark protection in 2021, and its software has the federally approved trademark Gemini. Google "knowingly" used Gemini as the brand of its AI system, infringing on GeminiData's intellectual property rights and causing consumers to confuse GeminiData, which developed the AI assistant platform, with Google.
Geminidata believes that Google has confused the public, damaged GeminiData's reputation, and profited from unfair use of the company's trademarks. GeminiData's prosecution document accuses, "Google made a well-thought-out decision to infringe GeminiData's exclusive rights without hesitation." Google made this infringement because it believed that "a small company like GeminiData is incapable of challenging a giant with overwhelming power."
Google did not comment on Geminidata's lawsuit. The stock price of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, continued to rise this Thursday, rising by more than 2% at midday and is expected to close at a new high in a week.