> The EUIPO found that the word "open" would be understood by the relevant public as meaning freely accessible, while the combination with "AI" (artificial intelligence) would be interpreted as referring to products based on openly accessible artificial intelligence.
> for certain software and information technology goods and services, the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection
More pertinently "the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection." I.e. the problem isn't that OpenAI's products don't match their description, but that trademarking it would unduly prevent others from describing their openly accessible artificial intelligence as "open AI."
>More pertinently "the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection."
As I wrote in my other comment, "open systems" also can be purely descriptive and yet Open Systems seems to be a valid trademark in Europe.
I'm not defending OpenAI. I'm just confused that the rules for allowing trademarks for ordinary words and phrases don't look consistent at the surface level.
I think there is most likely set of adjectives that would fall under same reasoning. GreenAI or FreeAI likely would be also be refused.
On other hand RedAI or BlueAI might very well pass. It is not entirely unreasonable decision if you consider if the terms would be used in regular conversations on AI.
And to think that this could have all been avoided if they'd just renamed themselves something more appropriate after they decided to focus fully on developing closed models for profit.
I seem to remember the company behind either Monster Cables, or Monster energy drinks, going after anyone that used the word “monster,” even in casual context.
The most ludicrous case of trademark issues I've seen to date has been Apple suing Prepear because they had a pear as their logo but Monster suing someone because of the term monster is not far from falling equally as far from the tree of wisdom and common sense.
Every large company does this to some extent, because thre's a concept in US trademark law that if you don't aggressively and pre-emptively defend your mark then 'constructive abandonment' becomes a valid defense against infringement. That means people can rip off your trade mark and then say in court 'well, I thought he company had given up ownership of the trademark because they didn't sue 'monster plush toys', so I decided to call my energy drink 'Monster Brew.'' This is also why US companies slap a 'TM' next to every instance of their trademark, even though it becomes a visual distraction in graphic design terms. Lawyers will argue that if you don't aggressively police the bounds of your intellectual property at all times then it evaporates.
The argument doesn't hinge on whether OpenAI is actually open. Rather it seems to have to do with the name being insufficiently distinguishable from a generic term ("open AI"). I think it's a bizarre ruling given that everyone already knows what OpenAI is.
They haven't prevented that. They have prevented trademarking the terms, thus other people whose AI offerings are Open are in fact allowed to describe their products as an Open AI, I presume they are not allowed to describe their products as being OpenAI however as that would create consumer confusion.
Furthermore they have not said anything about [adjective] being non trademarkable, they have said that you shouldn't be able to trademark things that have specific meaning in your industry, as Open has some specific meaning in the software industry.
Thus you would probably be allowed to name your things [big] +[proudct/service provided] or in this case bigAI because big does not really imply a specific desirable quality in the Software industry.
Now before you start talking of how you can see blah blah how big would be useful blah blah, as is the tradition whenever programmers encounter a legal decision that they do not agree with, it just ain't gonna work. I guess though I cannot prevent the inevitable, but nobody in IT says does it have the technical quality of "bigness" before purchasing, but they do about the quality of "Openness", so obviously some adjectives would be untrademarkable in this context, if you named your AI SecureAI probably no go, If you named your AI UglyAssAI probably fine.
Preventing the hijacking and privatization of short phrases and language in general is actually an excellent thing. I applaud this decision, and wish for the rules to become even tighter.
This seems a lot more sustainable than allowing me to trademark a tire company called "WinterTire" and enabling me to sue any other tire company that tries to capitalise on my trademark.
(And if WinterTire Co was anything like OpenAI, it'd be focused on making summer tires)
Key difference between the trademark systems here: in the EU system you don’t get a trademark by trading with a specific name and it then being recognized. It’s the other way around: the name must be unique, not confusing, and highly specific. It’s actually irrelevant whether a product exists or is traded at all.
Having gone through the process and gotten both approvals and rejections, the line is pretty clear.
But people actively searching for AI products who are perhaps a little less technically inclined might. And if they stumble upon a platform that by all accounts seems to be affiliated with OpenAI, that could be problematic, especially with the level of trust people seem to be comfortable handing to LLMs.
But that's on OpenAI for selecting that company name. EU trademark law hasn't changed, this was always going to be a problematic trademark if challenged
If I search for "Open AI" on google right now the first search results are openai.com, chatgpt.com and the OpenAI wikipedia page. None of which are open AI.
This really is the crux of the image, and now legal, issues. OpenAI hovered up tons of money and IP under the claim that they were doing this for the public good. Now they’ve essentially admitted that was all bullshit and that they want to sell the distillation of human created knowledge and content for a fee. It’s certainly bullshit to call that bait and switch “open”
The only problem I see here is the name doesn't reflect the reality. Time to put something in place that tells them to rebrand and continuously charges them for fraudulent misrepresentation or something until they do.
At least the GL part isn't something that has a widely understood meaning and I don't think any of the competing APIs are generally refered to as Graphics Libraries either.
"Apples in the Sky" is a valid trademark only because apples in the sky do not exist. If there was a strange meteorobiological event where such fruit started to grow in the clouds, this would no longer be a valid trademark for someone to create, because it would be descriptive of a category of things in the real world.
I don't like the idea of trademarks that are so well-known that they apply in all fields. That doesn't serve the public. Companies that well-known can easily apply for a trademark across multiple fields. The trademark owners that would really need that kind of help are the smaller ones that aren't eligible for that, and must specifically register in various fields of industry.
IP law needs severe reform no matter which jurisdiction you're in (since the majority of the world signed the Berne Convention, the same reforms are needed everywhere)
But what's the alternative for the trademarks that are truly universally known? Does it serve the public for me to be able to sell unauthorized Coca-Cola brand products, or more likely, the trademark owner selling a token item in each category to maintain the right to prevent others from using it?
Well, they could have used a less generic and misleading name (it is not very open, as noted in the article). OpenAI only really have themselves to blame here.
Plenty of companies use generic words for their name, and they still get trademarks.
American Airlines for example is indeed just an American airline. The Container Store, Vision Center, General Motors, International business machines (IBM), the list goes on.
Even Microsoft is just a contraction of their original product, microcomputer software.
You know, if it was someone offering a truly open (weights + training data) and available model running on consumer hardware in a privacy sandbox, I would welcome that "harm".
Ah yes, chosing a name that transports openness and transparency when the opposite is the case, and complaining about not being able to register that name as a trademark, which will cause financial harm the said company -- but somehow there's still people to spin it the other way around so it harms consumers now, therefore it was a bad decision.
You just don't like OpenAI and are for anything that hurts them, without thinking through the consequences.
What will harm consumers is the scammy "OpenAI" chat app that I can now legally upload to app stores in the EU, in hopes of tricking people into thinking it's a genuine app.
As much as I hate OpenAI for hijacking the term "open", and I love the idea of OpenAI losing, I am not sure if I agree with it.
Trademarks are first intended to protect consumers, so that if it says Coca Cola, then the Coca Cola company made it, for the better of for the worse, but at least you know.
OpenAI is already a well known name in Europe, and when I see OpenAI on a product, I expect it to be a product of that company. It doesn't mean I will want to use it, I may even want to avoid it, but I don't want it to be from someone else. By denying that trademark, anyone could call their product OpenAI, and I don't think that situation would benefit the consumer.
As explained in the judgement, being well-known is irrelevant. This is not about consumer protection, but about brand protection.
You are right that the decision has the potential to confuse consumers. However, that is on Open AI, they should have consulted trademark lawyers earlier, and should have rebranded after shifting from open AI to commercial AI.
No, they are very much not. That's the supposed benefit of patents and/or copyright. Trademarks are for ensuring there is no consumer confusion about which company they are trading with.
This feels like a slight misstep that could result in consumer harm. The name is incredibly vague, without doubt, but to claim "OpenAI" doesn't evoke a very specific company at this point in the minds of consumers seems myopic.
Whether it evokes a specific company now isn't relevant to the ruling. The trademark was refused, and this was a challenge to that initial refusal, and the refusal was upheld.
I somewhat agree with the EU here. It's far too generic, "Open" and "AI." To grant the trademark would mean any AI product that actually IS open, or open source, etc. cannot say they are "Open AI" which IMO would be a problem.
Where I might disagree with the ruling is spacing vs. no spacing. I'd have granted them the trademark on specifically "openai" as a single word but not "Open AI". Let's them defend their name against anyone else calling themselves "OpenAI" but not any other product advertising itself as "Open" "AI".
I completely agree with your last point. They shouldn't have ownership of "Open" in relation to "AI" broadly speaking, but their company name "OpenAI" should be protected.
Entirely possible, seeming more likely, that I didn't have enough background information on the short article.
The story about the ruling really doesn't explain why another company called OpenText that's been around since 1991 and has a valid trademark registration in EU but OpenAI would be invalid. OpenText also has its Europe headquarters in Germany: https://www.opentext.com/about/office-locations
Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?
First of all, can you explain what an "open text" is?
Second, as far as I can find through the French IP office (INPI), OpenText (single word) is trademarked as a figurative trademark (meaning they are basically protecting the image of the logo), not a verbal trademark.[0]
Which is what you typically do when you know that your trademark is too likely to be rejected (as being too descriptive), but you want to give it a semblance of protection.
So, no, I wouldn't assume they have been treated better.
> Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?
The legal situation may have changed since 1991. For example: The ruling refers to "Regulation 2017/1001", which, as the name suggests, only came into force in 2017.
Open AI has an independent descriptive meaning as composite term. You would practically trademark a whole class of products, not only a brand name.
In contrast, open text is not descriptive in the sense of being a category of things. Therefore there is no risk that competitors would run into trademark issues by just describing their products.
Also, trademark decisions are always contextual to their time. Today’s meaning of ‘open’ in the context of software and data was not even coined in 1991, at that time people used ‘free software’ as term. Today I am not sure if ‘open text’ could still be trademarked.
>Open AI has an independent descriptive meaning as composite term.
See my edit. "Open Systems" also had an independent descriptive meaning. The phrase "open systems" was a very common generic phrase in 1990s when companies talking about POSIX compliance was a big deal. (E.g. Microsoft touted POSIX in Windows NT.)
> The EUIPO found that the word "open" would be understood by the relevant public as meaning freely accessible, while the combination with "AI" (artificial intelligence) would be interpreted as referring to products based on openly accessible artificial intelligence.
> for certain software and information technology goods and services, the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection
edit: add the latter statement
More pertinently "the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection." I.e. the problem isn't that OpenAI's products don't match their description, but that trademarking it would unduly prevent others from describing their openly accessible artificial intelligence as "open AI."
>More pertinently "the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection."
As I wrote in my other comment, "open systems" also can be purely descriptive and yet Open Systems seems to be a valid trademark in Europe.
I'm not defending OpenAI. I'm just confused that the rules for allowing trademarks for ordinary words and phrases don't look consistent at the surface level.
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I think there is most likely set of adjectives that would fall under same reasoning. GreenAI or FreeAI likely would be also be refused.
On other hand RedAI or BlueAI might very well pass. It is not entirely unreasonable decision if you consider if the terms would be used in regular conversations on AI.
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And to think that this could have all been avoided if they'd just renamed themselves something more appropriate after they decided to focus fully on developing closed models for profit.
Someone finally asks some sensible questions, about hijacking of the term "open".
I seem to remember the company behind either Monster Cables, or Monster energy drinks, going after anyone that used the word “monster,” even in casual context.
The most ludicrous case of trademark issues I've seen to date has been Apple suing Prepear because they had a pear as their logo but Monster suing someone because of the term monster is not far from falling equally as far from the tree of wisdom and common sense.
Every large company does this to some extent, because thre's a concept in US trademark law that if you don't aggressively and pre-emptively defend your mark then 'constructive abandonment' becomes a valid defense against infringement. That means people can rip off your trade mark and then say in court 'well, I thought he company had given up ownership of the trademark because they didn't sue 'monster plush toys', so I decided to call my energy drink 'Monster Brew.'' This is also why US companies slap a 'TM' next to every instance of their trademark, even though it becomes a visual distraction in graphic design terms. Lawyers will argue that if you don't aggressively police the bounds of your intellectual property at all times then it evaporates.
It was Monster Cables who, blessedly, are nearly irrelevant nowadays. Apparently they tried to pivot into online gambling a few years ago.
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or Facebook going after anyone with ...book in the name.
See also: Edge Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games#Trademark_disputes
I thought you were joking, but that seemingly was the argument.
The argument doesn't hinge on whether OpenAI is actually open. Rather it seems to have to do with the name being insufficiently distinguishable from a generic term ("open AI"). I think it's a bizarre ruling given that everyone already knows what OpenAI is.
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Preventing companies named [adjective]+[product/service provided] doesn't seem sustainable.
They haven't prevented that. They have prevented trademarking the terms, thus other people whose AI offerings are Open are in fact allowed to describe their products as an Open AI, I presume they are not allowed to describe their products as being OpenAI however as that would create consumer confusion.
Furthermore they have not said anything about [adjective] being non trademarkable, they have said that you shouldn't be able to trademark things that have specific meaning in your industry, as Open has some specific meaning in the software industry.
Thus you would probably be allowed to name your things [big] +[proudct/service provided] or in this case bigAI because big does not really imply a specific desirable quality in the Software industry.
Now before you start talking of how you can see blah blah how big would be useful blah blah, as is the tradition whenever programmers encounter a legal decision that they do not agree with, it just ain't gonna work. I guess though I cannot prevent the inevitable, but nobody in IT says does it have the technical quality of "bigness" before purchasing, but they do about the quality of "Openness", so obviously some adjectives would be untrademarkable in this context, if you named your AI SecureAI probably no go, If you named your AI UglyAssAI probably fine.
Preventing the hijacking and privatization of short phrases and language in general is actually an excellent thing. I applaud this decision, and wish for the rules to become even tighter.
Companies can be named after random nonsense, ‘pink catfish’ could easily be the world’s #1 supplier of firearms and nobody would find it strange.
Caterpillar, Apple, Kellogg, etc really don’t have anything to do with the underlying product but neither do people’s names.
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This seems a lot more sustainable than allowing me to trademark a tire company called "WinterTire" and enabling me to sue any other tire company that tries to capitalise on my trademark.
(And if WinterTire Co was anything like OpenAI, it'd be focused on making summer tires)
Key difference between the trademark systems here: in the EU system you don’t get a trademark by trading with a specific name and it then being recognized. It’s the other way around: the name must be unique, not confusing, and highly specific. It’s actually irrelevant whether a product exists or is traded at all.
Having gone through the process and gotten both approvals and rejections, the line is pretty clear.
We had a similar result when a big U.S. defense company (Kratos) tried to take our open source project's domain name: open.space
The panel ruled in our favor, that their OPENSPACE trademark is probably invalid because it is descriptive.
https://domainnamewire.com/2026/04/08/u-s-defense-contractor...
Good. The trademark would ultimately allow them to sue any company for claiming it provides "open AI". So only right choice to reject it.
ChatGPT is a household name. And OpenAi is actually not, people outside tech don't necessarily know it.
Being well known is not part of determining if a trademark is valid
But people actively searching for AI products who are perhaps a little less technically inclined might. And if they stumble upon a platform that by all accounts seems to be affiliated with OpenAI, that could be problematic, especially with the level of trust people seem to be comfortable handing to LLMs.
But that's on OpenAI for selecting that company name. EU trademark law hasn't changed, this was always going to be a problematic trademark if challenged
They still have the trademark on their logo
If I search for "Open AI" on google right now the first search results are openai.com, chatgpt.com and the OpenAI wikipedia page. None of which are open AI.
Open source charity suddenly becoming capitalistic not going as planned
This really is the crux of the image, and now legal, issues. OpenAI hovered up tons of money and IP under the claim that they were doing this for the public good. Now they’ve essentially admitted that was all bullshit and that they want to sell the distillation of human created knowledge and content for a fee. It’s certainly bullshit to call that bait and switch “open”
The only problem I see here is the name doesn't reflect the reality. Time to put something in place that tells them to rebrand and continuously charges them for fraudulent misrepresentation or something until they do.
They should just rename it to ClosedAI.
It would be more honest to their customers and better show who they are and what they stand for.
If OpenAI is rejected, that would be rejected too…
HopingAI seems more pertinent
I wonder how that trademark logic would apply to something like OpenGL.
At least the GL part isn't something that has a widely understood meaning and I don't think any of the competing APIs are generally refered to as Graphics Libraries either.
god thanks ClosedAI is still available
Trump administration intervening in ... 1... 2... 3...
Weird decision, if so I wonder what would they say about other trademarks like Apple..
Apple is a valid trademark in the "computers" category, but would not be accepted in the "food" category.
Here are the 13 valid trademarks in France containing the word "apple" in the same category as fruit: https://data.inpi.fr/search?advancedSearch=%257B%2522checkbo...
None of them are descriptive of the actual fruit.
"Apples in the Sky" is a valid trademark only because apples in the sky do not exist. If there was a strange meteorobiological event where such fruit started to grow in the clouds, this would no longer be a valid trademark for someone to create, because it would be descriptive of a category of things in the real world.
What about "Savoury apple" ?
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Waiting for Apple to enter the food industry, with a highly specific McIntosh-based genetic lineage that they dub the "iApple".
I don't like the idea of trademarks that are so well-known that they apply in all fields. That doesn't serve the public. Companies that well-known can easily apply for a trademark across multiple fields. The trademark owners that would really need that kind of help are the smaller ones that aren't eligible for that, and must specifically register in various fields of industry.
IP law needs severe reform no matter which jurisdiction you're in (since the majority of the world signed the Berne Convention, the same reforms are needed everywhere)
But what's the alternative for the trademarks that are truly universally known? Does it serve the public for me to be able to sell unauthorized Coca-Cola brand products, or more likely, the trademark owner selling a token item in each category to maintain the right to prevent others from using it?
Hard to make it clearer that you didn't read/understand the decision than a post like this
[dead]
Touché
This seems like a bad decision to me that will ultimately harm consumers, if anyone can launch a product and say it’s made by “OpenAI”.
Well, they could have used a less generic and misleading name (it is not very open, as noted in the article). OpenAI only really have themselves to blame here.
Plenty of companies use generic words for their name, and they still get trademarks.
American Airlines for example is indeed just an American airline. The Container Store, Vision Center, General Motors, International business machines (IBM), the list goes on.
Even Microsoft is just a contraction of their original product, microcomputer software.
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Give me a break. Apple doesn't sell apples.
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You know, if it was someone offering a truly open (weights + training data) and available model running on consumer hardware in a privacy sandbox, I would welcome that "harm".
It's not going to be something like that. Anyone legitimate is going to want to use a different name because of the confusion.
The only people naming something "OpenAI" are going to be trying to trick you into downloading their scammy chatGPT clone.
OpenAI would probably still have some kind of claim against a company that did that.
No, at least not in the EU. That's the meaning of this decision.
"It will harm consumers"
Ah yes, chosing a name that transports openness and transparency when the opposite is the case, and complaining about not being able to register that name as a trademark, which will cause financial harm the said company -- but somehow there's still people to spin it the other way around so it harms consumers now, therefore it was a bad decision.
That's the definition of anti-consumer behavior
You just don't like OpenAI and are for anything that hurts them, without thinking through the consequences.
What will harm consumers is the scammy "OpenAI" chat app that I can now legally upload to app stores in the EU, in hopes of tricking people into thinking it's a genuine app.
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As much as I hate OpenAI for hijacking the term "open", and I love the idea of OpenAI losing, I am not sure if I agree with it.
Trademarks are first intended to protect consumers, so that if it says Coca Cola, then the Coca Cola company made it, for the better of for the worse, but at least you know.
OpenAI is already a well known name in Europe, and when I see OpenAI on a product, I expect it to be a product of that company. It doesn't mean I will want to use it, I may even want to avoid it, but I don't want it to be from someone else. By denying that trademark, anyone could call their product OpenAI, and I don't think that situation would benefit the consumer.
As explained in the judgement, being well-known is irrelevant. This is not about consumer protection, but about brand protection.
You are right that the decision has the potential to confuse consumers. However, that is on Open AI, they should have consulted trademark lawyers earlier, and should have rebranded after shifting from open AI to commercial AI.
I trust the judges on that one, they know the law better than I do, obviously.
I am also not discussing about who is at fault, I agree that it is on OpenAI.
I just don't want, say, some company that is even shadier than OpenAI to launch an OpenAI branded protect with the intention to mislead people.
Maybe grant OpenAI the trademark, but do not allow them to use it on products that are not actually open, but I guess it is legally problematic.
>OpenAI is already a well known name in Europe
Are there brand awareness surveys that back that up?
> Trademarks are first intended to protect consumers
Huh? I thought they're intended to protect "innovation".
No, they are very much not. That's the supposed benefit of patents and/or copyright. Trademarks are for ensuring there is no consumer confusion about which company they are trading with.
I think you are confusing trademarks with patents.
Trademarks don't prevent you from copying anything, they only prevent you from being misleading regarding the origin.
I think patents are for innovation and trademarks are to make sure that people can reliably know who they’re dealing with.
This feels like a slight misstep that could result in consumer harm. The name is incredibly vague, without doubt, but to claim "OpenAI" doesn't evoke a very specific company at this point in the minds of consumers seems myopic.
Whether it evokes a specific company now isn't relevant to the ruling. The trademark was refused, and this was a challenge to that initial refusal, and the refusal was upheld.
I somewhat agree with the EU here. It's far too generic, "Open" and "AI." To grant the trademark would mean any AI product that actually IS open, or open source, etc. cannot say they are "Open AI" which IMO would be a problem.
Where I might disagree with the ruling is spacing vs. no spacing. I'd have granted them the trademark on specifically "openai" as a single word but not "Open AI". Let's them defend their name against anyone else calling themselves "OpenAI" but not any other product advertising itself as "Open" "AI".
I completely agree with your last point. They shouldn't have ownership of "Open" in relation to "AI" broadly speaking, but their company name "OpenAI" should be protected.
Entirely possible, seeming more likely, that I didn't have enough background information on the short article.
The EU shouldn't be held to bad decisions made by the US trademark office.
Ah yes, classic max capitalism take
The story about the ruling really doesn't explain why another company called OpenText that's been around since 1991 and has a valid trademark registration in EU but OpenAI would be invalid. OpenText also has its Europe headquarters in Germany: https://www.opentext.com/about/office-locations
Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?
EDIT add another example is Open Systems that has a office in Switzerland. https://www.open-systems.com/
The trademark registrations search results: https://www.tmdn.org/tmview/#/tmview/results?page=1&pageSize...
We can assume the OpenAI lawyers brought up these and other similar examples and the court rejected the past examples as a valid argument.
First of all, can you explain what an "open text" is?
Second, as far as I can find through the French IP office (INPI), OpenText (single word) is trademarked as a figurative trademark (meaning they are basically protecting the image of the logo), not a verbal trademark.[0]
Which is what you typically do when you know that your trademark is too likely to be rejected (as being too descriptive), but you want to give it a semblance of protection.
So, no, I wouldn't assume they have been treated better.
[0] https://data.inpi.fr/search?advancedSearch=%257B%2522checkbo...
All OpenText EUIPO trademarks I can find are also figurative https://www.tmdn.org/tmview/#/tmview/results?page=1&pageSize...
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> Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?
The legal situation may have changed since 1991. For example: The ruling refers to "Regulation 2017/1001", which, as the name suggests, only came into force in 2017.
Open AI has an independent descriptive meaning as composite term. You would practically trademark a whole class of products, not only a brand name.
In contrast, open text is not descriptive in the sense of being a category of things. Therefore there is no risk that competitors would run into trademark issues by just describing their products.
Also, trademark decisions are always contextual to their time. Today’s meaning of ‘open’ in the context of software and data was not even coined in 1991, at that time people used ‘free software’ as term. Today I am not sure if ‘open text’ could still be trademarked.
>Open AI has an independent descriptive meaning as composite term.
See my edit. "Open Systems" also had an independent descriptive meaning. The phrase "open systems" was a very common generic phrase in 1990s when companies talking about POSIX compliance was a big deal. (E.g. Microsoft touted POSIX in Windows NT.)
Maybe it's because in 1991 the word open in software wasn't ringing any bells for your average joe.
Basically the laws have changed since then, and OpenText is grandfathered in.