Wired reports that Musk’s xAI faces a potential trademark dispute over the name of its chatbot Grok. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office suspended the company's trademark application because it believed the name could cause confusion with the names of two other companies, artificial intelligence chip maker Groq and software provider Grokstream. Now, a tech startup called Bizly claims ownership of the name "Grok".

Bizly and xAI appear to have come up with the name "Grok" independently. Ron Shah, founder of Bizly, said,He came up with the name during a brainstorming session with a colleague, his colleagues at the time were using the word as a verb (the word "grok" is often used in the tech world to mean "to understand"). "I just thought, this is the name I want," Shah said. "We were so excited, we gave high fives and decided on this name!"

According to the Times of India,Musk said he named his chatbot after a term from the 1961 science fiction novel "Stranger in the Land". Author Robert A. Heinlein imagined "grok" as a word in the Martian vocabulary that also means "understanding."

Shah said he applied to trademark the name "Grok" in 2021. Two years later, as he was preparing to launch an AI-powered live event app called Grok, Musk announced his eponymous chatbot. "That was a day I'll never forget," Shah said. “I woke up and looked at my phone and I had so many messages from friends saying, ‘Did you get acquired by Elon? Congratulations!’ It totally shocked me.”

Shah insists xAI infringes on his trademark. But Josh Gerben, founder of Gerben Intellectual Property Law Firm, which specializes in trademark practice, said that under U.S. law, trademark regulations are mainly to protect consumers rather than companies. “The goal is to avoid consumer confusion as to who is behind the product or service,” he said.

When Musk announced he was launching a chatbot, Shah said Bizly was still in beta and was working with financial services company Carta on a pilot of its Grok app. The startup is about to close a funding round, but Shah said,The deal fell through amid investor concerns over trademark disputes. The fact that Bizly's Grok never made it to market (and is currently unavailable) may call into question what trademark rights the company is able to enforce.

Now, the Shah said,His company was on the verge of collapse. He hopes to resolve the matter amicably with xAI— and even offered to work with Musk’s company or sell it the Grok trademark at a fair price. "We spent $2 million developing our Grok products and business, and once Mr. Musk announced the use of the trademark, our financing fell through," Shah wrote in an email to xAI attorney Robert Gere last Monday. "Our company is on the verge of collapse and needs to recoup its losses to survive."