It seems the folks at OpenAI were surprised by how popular ChatGPT became. Because they didn't expect it, they didn't do the usual things to protect the "ChatGPT" brand, such as buying the .com domain name.

They also didn't do a very good job of protecting the "CHATGPT" wordmark trademark. Check out all the "live" trademarks there are for "CHATGPT" with the USPTO, and note how most of them don't belong to OpenAI:

https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-information

Edit: It seems there's no way to link to the search results, but you can do a new search for CHATGPT easily enough.

More details..

https://domaininvesting.com/openai-secures-chatgpt-com/

Shouldn't the headline be "Person who bought chatgpt.com on godaddy pointed it at an openai IP address" since that's all we know? They could just change it on godaddy to point to geminis IP tomorrow in godaddy dns settings if they wanted, right? How do we know openai is even involved?

It's a valid assumption because chat.openai.com points to chatgpt.com

Also, others commented this link: https://domaininvesting.com/openai-secures-chatgpt-com

I guess we can simply ask in the official forum whether chatgpt.com is a legit domain owned by OpenAI to settle the question.

Hi, I only confirmed that when I opened https://chat.openai.com, it redirected to https://chatgpt.com, right now (2024-05-05 02:26 UTC), at least here.

Well, probably I should change my chat bookmarks to new address.

Funny enough I only noticed because I was canceling my subscription and it redirected me.

It's not clear wether it has been bought:

> I don’t know if there was any financial settlement involved in this dispute. Generally speaking, the only incentives I can think of for a respondent to settle a UDRP dispute early is if a payment is made or in order to prevent an adverse UDRP decision. In addition, even if a UDRP panel ruled in favor of the respondent, it could have been a Pyrrhic victory if the complainant opted to escalate this to the courts, where legal fees can add up quickly

https://domaininvesting.com/openai-secures-chatgpt-com/

I was confused why https://chat.openai.com suddenly redirects to https://chatgpt.com which results in connection refused. Turns out chatgpt.com is in many blocklists (e.g. Pi-Hole) due to it being a potentially unsafe Domain before OpenAI acquiring it. So heads up if you use Pi-Hole / AdGuard etc.!

Do you know what is more interesting?

Why does ai.com now point to Google Gemini?

Who really owns ai.com? Or does OpenAI or x.ai still own the domain and just redirects it to other places?

Wasn't it pointing to https://x.ai just a few months ago? Interesting

That's so interesting, it pointed to Twitters Grok previously

Is registering domains with names similar to a product of a third party a valid investment strategy? Particularly if it is very early in the product lifecycle?

It could be, especially since the average person likely isn't familiar with OpenAI but has definitely heard of ChatGPT.

There are some who believe so. I think they call it "domain investing"

Never heard it called that. Domain Squatting is the more common way to refer to it.

The "investors" don't like that, with its perfectly accurate negative connotations

Isn’t that illegal to a certain extent (domain squatting)?

I'm mostly just surprised they didn't do this before launch.

Maybe it was before, but now the entire world knows it well. To change it would be taking an incredibly recognizable name—like Twitter for instance—and then just throwing it away. ChatGPT is forever part of history, and almost everyone recognizes it immediately at this point.

it's still a terrible name

it has four syllables

it's hard to pronounce

the last three letters can easily be confused

it looks ugly etc

Tell that to PostgreSQL

Which is also a terrible name.

It’s even horrible with this change