Nvidia hopes to block AMD’s RX 3080 with a new Trademark

AMD’s RX 3080 has been rumoured for quite some time, a GPU name which is designed to 1-up Nvidia’s RTX 20XX series in a literal sense, copying the tactics of the company’s CPU division when they released their Ryzen-based X370 platform to compete with Intel’s Z270 offerings. 

The idea is simple, you see two products on a shelf and you look at the numbers. X370 must be better than Z270; the number is bigger, right? It’s a simple marketing tactic, and it makes sense for AMD to reuse it within the graphics card market. AMD’s naming schemes have moved from RX 580 to RX Vega 64 to Radeon VII; it’s not like AMD has a defined branding scheme to follow within the GPU market anymore, so why not piggyback on Nvidia? Nvidia even went to the effort of changing GTX to RTX on the high-end, simply begging to be confused with AMD’s established RX graphics lineup. 

Nvidia doesn’t exactly have clean hands here, especially if you look into the company’s Geforce Partner Program (GPP). The GPP could be seen as a failed attempt to force a separation between Geforce and Radeon when it came sub-brands on 3rd party graphics, giving established names like ASUS ROG, MSI Gaming X and Gigabyte Aorus to Nvidia for exclusive use, leaving AMD, the smaller graphics brand without the support of these established, 3rd party brand names. Both sides have tried to play dirty in the graphics cards marketing game, the RX 3080 is just what’s likely to be AMD’s latest trick, albeit a rumoured one. 

Now, it looks like Nvidia wants to stop AMD’s games, with recent trademark applications showing that Nvidia claims ownership of the numbers3080, 4080 and 5080, at least within the world of PC graphics. This move appears to be Nvidia’s attempt to stop Radeon calling their next graphics card the RX 3080, a name which would inevitably cause confusion when Nvidia releases their RTX/GTX 30XX series, which should include a model called the RTX 3080.