Nvidia could clash with Raytheon after defense giant rebrands as RTX

[midian182]

In context: Virtually all readers of this site will only think of Nvidia and its more recent GeForce cards when they hear the letters RTX. If, however, you're a fan of defense contractors, you'll likely know that RTX is also the new name of Raytheon Technologies, and that could cause problems for Jensen Huang and co.

Raytheon Technologies announced on Monday that it is rebranding to the three-letter RTX - it also has an RTX.com website. This isn't completely unusual as the company's stock has been trading under the RTX ticker since it merged with aerospace manufacturer United Technologies Corp in 2020.

Nvidia first introduced the RTX name, which signifies a card's ray tracing capabilities, with the launch of its Turing-based cards in 2018. The company unveiled the GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti on August 20, 2018, at the Gamescom conference, so it had the name first.

Nvidia might not be in a hurry to pick a fight with RTX, at least not yet, despite its $1 trillion market cap dwarfing the defense company's $149 billion, most probably because the two industries are so far removed from each other that people are unlikely to mix the two up. The tech giant notes that Raytheon Technologies/RTX uses its GPUs in simulations to design and test mission-critical sensors before they ever fly, so the contractor would likely have known about team green's use of RTX.

Interestingly, as PC Gamer points out, Nvidia does have a trademark for "RTX," but that currently has the "Opposition Pending" status, which means one or more companies object to the firm using it and the office is investigating the matter. It's been this way since 2020, which is when Raytheon Technologies started using the RTX name for its stock, so there's a possibility that the two are linked.

Some tech companies are fiercely protective of their associated names, and like to launch lawsuits against anyone who dares infringe on their IPs. Cupertino's most recent act of aggression involves trying to trademark images of actual Apples. It also launched a trademark lawsuit in 2020 against tiny app developer and fitness startup Super Healthy Kids over claims the logo used in its Prepear recipe app – a pear - was based on Apple's logo.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99166-nvidia-could-clash-raytheon-after-defense-giant-rebrands.html

 

[George Morley]

Raytheon are a far bigger deal than Nvidia. They're keeping that name.

 

[toooooot]

Missiles with limited range. Want longer range? Pay more. 1 million per mile.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

The courts would throw this out immediately. What mor0n would think any person would associate Raytheon with graphics cards.

 

[human7]

The courts would throw this out immediately. What mor0n would think any person would associate Raytheon with graphics cards.

You underestimate how many morons there are in this world, and how eager some courts are to oblige them.

 

[human7]

Missiles with limited range. Want longer range? Pay more. 1 million per mile.

That's... not an unreasonable price (at least not for hypersonic missiles, which I haven't been hearing too much about lately, guess that was a fad), considering how expensive everything in the defense industry is these days.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Suing a company that can blow you up doesn't sound like a wise idea.

 

[captaincranky]

The courts would throw this out immediately. What mor0n would think any person would associate Raytheon with graphics cards.

Back in the day, Raytheon was mostly involved with missile guidance systems, radar tracking and whatnot. Given nVidia's current trajectory with ray tracing and AI, there might be more of a crossover between them than you would think at first glance. After all, didn't the US just ban shipments of high end chips into China, fearing they might be of some military value?

Although selling from what is claimed to be China (?) to China might be quite tricky and difficult to curtail.

 

[captaincranky]

@VaRmeNsl "Suing a company that can blow you up doesn't sound like a wise idea." A bit whimsically over the top perhaps, but still funny

Elon Musk just picked a fight with the "Zuckster", Musk would likely lose. And well,Muskie's got a bunch of those Falcon 9s. You would think that Google Headquarters better pray that Musk isn't a sore loser. (And he has demonstrated those tendencies here of late. There's petulance aplenty being exhibited in Musk's behavior recently).

 

[GeforcerFX]

That's... not an unreasonable price (at least not for hypersonic missiles, which I haven't been hearing too much about lately, guess that was a fad), considering how expensive everything in the defense industry is these days.

Usually when you stop hearing about things but they are still funded like hypersonic weapons and directed energy weapons it's because they have gone quiet on features, they don't need to sell them, they need to make them and test them. The DOD won't want the MIC spreading specs about weapons systems that they are the only customer on. We see the same thing with long range AAM programs atm, the DOD has 5 separate a2a missile programs funded and in various stages of R&D, Test, Evaluation, and Production. We heard crap loads about all this 3 or 4 years ago and then bam dead silence from everyone, but the funding is still there every year in the DOD funding with the occasional press release about this system being tested or entering initial production.