Source: NicFab (Nicola Fabrizi blog)

The General Court of the European Union (Eighth Chamber) dismissed OpenAI, Inc.’s action in Case T‑555/25 and confirmed the partial refusal to register the EU word mark OPENAI for certain goods and services in Classes 9, 42 and 45, ordering OpenAI to pay costs. The application had been filed on 15 June 2023; the examiner partially rejected it on 5 December 2024; the Board of Appeal dismissed the appeal on 10 June 2025; the hearing before the Court took place on 21 April 2026 and the judgment was given on 15 July 2026. The Court found that the decisive ground for refusal is descriptiveness under Article 7(1)(c) EUTMR and dismissed the action in its entirety without resolving distinctiveness under Article 7(1)(b).

The Court treated the relevant public as the English‑speaking public in the Union, general and professional, and held that the public perceives the elements “open” and “AI” (even without a hyphen), most importantly as meaning “accessible or unrestricted artificial intelligence.” Alternative readings (open‑source AI; transparent/explainable AI) were acknowledged but the descriptive finding rests primarily on the “accessible/unrestricted” meaning. The Court rejected arguments based on neologism, absence of space or hyphen, commercial reputation (which is relevant only to Article 7(3)), and earlier EU or non‑EU registrations; it accepted a single general line of reasoning across goods and services because they can be based on freely accessible AI, a point the author notes may broaden Article 7(1)(c)’s reach. The judgment is read as protecting a semantic public domain for descriptive uses of “open AI” and is compared, in the analysis, with how the AI Act operationalizes “open” for certain general‑purpose AI models.