To be fair the other Thinking Machines has been defunct over 30 years.
That said, what was left of the old one was bought by Sun, which is now owned by Oracle.
I wonder if they still own rights to the name? Not the wisest move to name your new company after something owned by the most famously litigious tech corporation.
Yet the Jurassic Park franchise is just as strong as ever.
Thinking Machines CM-5 in Jurassic Park (1993):
https://www.starringthecomputer.com/appearance.html?f=11&c=1...
Jurassic World Rebirth passes $500 M in revenue:
https://www.koimoi.com/box-office/jurassic-world-rebirth-wor...
Fun fact, in the novel the computers were Cray X-MPs (sadly Cray is now semi-defunct, since they were bought and merged into HPE) [1].
[1] https://cray-history.net/2023/08/20/cray-systems-in-popular-...
Thinking Machines was chosen over the Cray because they had more visual appeal. Sheryl Handler the CEO had (has) a real flair for and it showed; they were neat looking machines
The Cray machines looked more like an airport seating area. Or with later models, obstacles in a laser tag arena. While the Thinking Machines with the moving LEDs looked alive, almost like it was designed to be a character in a movie, which they became.
Maybe the new company should consider something like this for the next investor show and tell
https://rodyne.com/?p=1674
what? Cray machines were pretty rad looking in their own way.
They were, but they didn't blink.
Fascinating question! I can't find any mention of this seemingly obvious issue.
Here's[1][2] their trademark application from February, which is still "NOT ASSIGNED". Technically it's for their logotype but I imagine it's all the same issue, considering that they include "Computer hardware" in the description of their company (which is exactly what the old one did). This site ominously says that the only action since the filing date was on June 5th, titled "LETTER OF PROTEST EVIDENCE FORWARDED" -- perhaps that's Oracle?
I think this[4] is the trademark for the original's ("Thinking Machines Corporation") trademark logotype, first used in 1987 and defunct ("cancelled"?) by 1999. Another site[5] lists three other "Dead/Cancelled" trademarks owned by the original, and two more recent attempts by randos in 2006 and 2010 that were both shot down.
Technically they're "Thinking Machine Lab Inc."[3], but they're basically always referred to without the "Lab", even to the point of using thinkingmachines.ai as their domain (which, hilariously, doesn't use their trademarked logotype). Another goofy tidbit is that they also filed a trademark for a serif logotype of the words "BEEP BOOP"[6] -- maybe that's their fallback name!
Would be fascinated to hear from anyone familiar with US trademark law on what might be going on, and how we might see what the "LETTER OF PROTEST" is! My layperson understanding would definitely tell me that Oracle would maintain the trademarks, but perhaps they were forced to let them lapse due to lack of use?
I've been slowly building (y'know how it is...) a (one-man...) company filed as "Doering Thinking Machines, LLC" for a few years (named after an old family business, "Doering Machines"), so I'm quite interested to see how this shakes out!
[1] https://furm.com/trademarks/thinking-machines-99054776
[2] For the love of god, please HN gods, just make these comments markdown. IDK what battle you're fighting but it's a baffling one. The lack of blockquotes is painful, but the lack of inline links is downright diabolical! You have three people now, you can afford the effort ;)
[3] https://trademarks.justia.com/741/37/thinking-machines-74137...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab
[5] https://uspto.report/TM/99051772
[6] https://trademarks.justia.com/990/71/beep-99071391.html
I really hope these seemingly experienced entrepreneurs got the trademark sorted out and locked down before adopting it. Otherwise it may be an expensive lesson.
IANAL but I do know trademarking a logotype is a kind of 'trade dress' that's not the same trademarking the words of the name (even if those words appear\ in the logotype).
One would imagine they already thought of that. There are at least two people at a16z old enough to know about the original TM.
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