Google faces another lawsuit, accused of trademark infringement by defendant Gemini chat tool

Google, which is deeply embroiled in antitrust litigation, is facing another lawsuit, this time related to the generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool Gemini.

On the evening of Wednesday, September 11th, a small company in the generative AI field in San Francisco, Gemini Data, filed a lawsuit against Google's AI chat tool Gemini for trademark infringement in the Northern District of California Federal Court. They requested the federal court to award monetary damages to Google and permanently prohibit Google from using their intellectual property on AI-related products.

In February this year, Google announced the renaming of its ChatGPT robot Bard to Gemini, which has been powered by a large language model (LLM) called Gemini since December last year. Comments at the time suggested that the renaming was reasonable.

According to the lawsuit filed by Gemini Data, Google's previous application to register the Gemini trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was rejected on the grounds that it might cause confusion with Gemini Data's rights. Shortly after USPTO rejected Google's request, an "anonymous" entity contacted Gemini Data inquiring about obtaining trademark rights. Gemini Data stated that they eventually suspected that the entity was acting on behalf of Google and ceased contact.

Gemini Data stated that the company is not "monopolizing the development of generative AI tools," but does indeed have the "proprietary rights" to its brand. The company obtained trademark and service mark protection in 2021, and its software holds the federally approved trademark Gemini. Google, with full knowledge, used Gemini as the brand for its AI system, infringing on Gemini Data's intellectual property and causing confusion among consumers between Gemini Data, the developer of the AI assistant platform, and Google.

Gemini Data believes that Google has misled the public, damaged Gemini Data's reputation, and profited unfairly by using the company's trademark. The lawsuit filed by Gemini Data accuses Google of making a deliberate decision to infringe on Gemini Data's proprietary rights, believing that "small companies like Gemini Data do not have the ability to challenge giants with overwhelming strength."

Google has not commented on the lawsuit by Gemini Data. This Thursday, Google's parent company Alphabet's stock price continued to rise, surging over 2% at midday and poised to close at a one-week high