Tachyum announced that it is beginning to take steps to defend the use of its registered TPU trademark. Tachyum initially applied for trademark status in September 2015 and has held the rights to TPU (for its AI Tachyum Processing Unit) since October 2020. Google recently filed for similar trademark protection of Google TPU for its Tensor Processing Unit on November 21st of this year.

Tachyum is requesting Google to stop using TPU as a part of a descriptor for its Google TPU and will petition the U.S. Trademark Office to defend its legal claims to the term. Trademarks are important and valuable property of companies in much the same way that patents, copyrights and other intellectual property assignments are. Tachyum offers its TPU AI intellectual property as a licensable core, allowing developers to take full advantage of intelligent, datacenter-trained AI when making IoT and Edge devices. Tachyum is the only owner of the TPU trademark within the AI space.