The Chinese company of artificial intelligence Deepseek has been accused of intellectual property theft, faced privacy questions in Europe and was the goal of a huge computer attack. Now, it seems that the company has a new headache in the hands: a conflict of US brands.
Tuesday Deepseek submitted a application to the United States Patent and Marches Office (USPTO) looking for brands, its apps and tools of ai chatbots. But it was a hair too late. Thirty -six hours earlier, another The company had applied for the “Deepseek” brand: a company based in the delaware out of the name “Delonon Group Inc.”
Delson Group claims to have sold products with the Deepseek brand from the beginning of 2020. In its question, the company lists its address as a house in Cupertino and its CEO and founder named Willie Lu.
LU, who graduated from the same university of the founder of Deepseek Liang Wenfeng, University of Zhejiang, says that his LinkedIn profile is a “semi-in pension” consultancy professor in Stanford and an FCC consultant. Lu seems to have spent most of his career in the wireless sector. Other Techcrunch web pages discovered through the e -mail address listed in the brands depot the Lessons and Training Courses on Wireless standards.
Lu also hosts an educational course “Deepseek” in Las Vegas on “Ai Super-Intelligence”, starting from $ 800 to the ticket, which has prominent on the website connected in the Delson Group brands deposit. The website says that Lu has “about 30 years of experience in Tic (information and communication technology) and artificial intelligence camps”.
When it was reached for a comment on the brand’s storage -email, LU told Techcrunch that she would be willing to “meet and speak” to Palo Alto or Sarathoga. (This journalist is based in New York.) Lu has not responded to a follow-up request.
A search for “Delson Group” in the test and appeal system of the USPTO brand presents more than two dozen disputes between LU and organizations including GSSA, TENCENT and WIRELESS TRACFONE. Delson abandoned some of the brands for which he presented or otherwise canceled his suspended questions.
The model suggests a brand of brand squats, recording a brand with the intention of selling it later or riding on the popularity of a brand.
However, the Deepseek options are quite limited in this juncture. According to the US law, the first user of a brand is generally considered that the legitimate owner of the brand, unless it can be demonstrated that the brand was recorded in bad faith.
“While Deepseek could potentially look for a coexistence agreement if they can demonstrate that they operate in different aspects of the ASON, the US company has several advantages”, Josh Gerben, lawyer and founder of Gerben IP, a legal practice specialized in IP Specialized in IP specialized in IP specialized in IP in IP specialized in IP in IP in IP. Problems, said to Techcrunch. “They presented first, they support a previous use-2020 against the early 2023 date of Deepseek- (E) have a live website that shows activities related to artificial intelligence, including training events.”
Gerben said that Delson Group could also be able to claim the “reverse confusion” due to the rapid rise to the limelight of Deepseek, or suck to block Deepseek from continuing to use his brand in the United States
“Deepseek could actually have a brand problem in the United States in which there could be this prisoner of previous rights – Delson Group – and that the owner of previous rights could have an excellent case of violation of the brand,” said Gerben.
It would not be the first time that an artificial intelligence society clashes against the contrary winds.
Openii was unable to “GPT” last February after the USPTO established that the term was too generic. In recent months, Openai has also fought the technologist and entrepreneur Guy Ravine for the right to use “Ai Open”, which Ravine claims to have launched as part of a vision to the “open source” around 2015 – the founder of Openi .
