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.