China's AI company Deepseek has been charged with IP theft, facing inquiries about privacy in Europe, and is a target of a huge cyber attack. Now, the company seems to have a new headache in his hands. It is a US trademark dispute.
On Tuesday, DeepSeek has filed an application to the US Patent Trading Agency (USPTO) in search of trademarks of AI chatbot applications, products and tools. But it was too late hair. 36 hours ago, another company applied to the trademark “Deepseek”. A company named Delson Group Inc. based in Delaware
DELSON Group claims that it has sold AI products from the DeepSeek brand since early 2020. In the application, the company lists its address as a Cupertino house, and the CEO and founder are listed as a person named WiLLIEE LU.
Lu, who graduated from the same university, Liang Wenfeng at the University of Zhijiang's Deepseek, claims to be a “half -retired” consulting professor in Stanford in Linkedin profile and is an FCC advisor. LU seems to have spent most of his career in the wireless industry. Other web pages TechCrunch have been revealed through the email address described in the trademark filing mentioned in Lu lectures and training courses related to Wireless Standards.
LU also holds the “DeepSeek” education course in Las Vegas with “AI Super-Intelligence” and begins with a single ticket of $ 800. The website claims that Lu has “ICT for about 30 years of expertise. [information and communications technology] And AI field. “
When he asked for comments in a trademark filing email, Lu told TechCrunch that he would not “meet and talk” in Palo Alto or Saratoga. (This reporter is based in NYC.) LU did not respond to follow -up requests.
Search for the “Delson Group” in the USPTO trademark test and the appeal system of the appeal committee will lead to more than 2 -dozen disputes with organizations such as LU, GSMA, Tencent, and Tracfone wireless. Derson has abandoned some of the trademarks submitted or canceled his application.
A wider range of searches using USPTO trademark search tools will give you a 28 trademark list registered in Delson. Some of them are brands that belong to Chinese companies. Delson has a trademark of “GELY”, for example, “GELY”, such as Chinese automobile companies, and “CHINA Mobile”, an electric communication provider based in Hong Kong.
This pattern suggests a trademark crouching history -registered a trademark to sell it later and get the brand's popularity. One of the most well -known examples of trademark crouching, Zhan Baosheng, a Chinese businessman, is a Chinese English name “TESLA”, and Tesla's “T” logo, font, and China. I succeeded in the same way as the name. (Baosheng later settled with Tesla with a private amount.)
To this point, the options of DeepSeek are very limited at this point. Under US law, the first user of the trademark is regarded as a legitimate owner of the trademark unless the trademark is registered with malicious intent.
“Deepseek may ask for a coexistence agreement if you can prove that DELSON Group is active in various aspects of AI, but there are some benefits to US companies.” 。 “They first submitted, they insisted on the previous use -2020 and Deepseek's claims in 2023- [and] They have a live website that show AI -related activities, including training events. “
Gelben said that the Dertson Group could even claim “reverse confusion” for the rapid rise of deep shake.
“DeepSeek may actually have a trademark problem in the United States, which may have this previous right -owner, DELSON Group, and the previous right owner is a very good case for trademark violations. Gerben says.
This is not the first time that the AI company has opposed the trademark headwind.
Openai failed in the GPT trademark last February after the USPTO determined that the term was too common. Openai has been fighting an engineer and entrepreneur GUY GUY RAVINE for the right to use the “open AI” for the past few months. Ravine claims that it has been pitched as part of the “open source” AI vision around 2015.