'Intakegate': Why AI Lawtech's Naming Crisis Is a Class 42 Brand Emergency

When the Register Runs Out of Words

On 13 October 2026, Stockholm-based legal AI company Legora launched a product called Intake. It was aimed at helping in-house legal teams manage requests from across their businesses, with AI used to handle routine tasks and free up lawyers for more complex work. The following day, San Francisco-based rival Harvey launched its own product. Also called Intake. Both described their offerings as a "front door" for legal requests, in almost identical language.

To make the episode yet more crowded: UK legal AI startup Wordsmith, which focuses on in-house legal teams, had already launched its own product, also called Intake, back in August. Three competitors, one product name, and a register full of prior art. Dubbed 'Intakegate' almost immediately by IP press, the incident was initially taken as a sign of AI's creative malaise, though the truth may have more to do with fierce competition and a dwindling pool of trademarks.

A Class 42 Problem, Not Just a PR Problem

The IP stakes sit squarely in Class 42: the Nice class covering software-as-a-service, technology platforms, and AI-enabled services. It is already the fastest-growing class on the global register. Class 42 hit 66,694 filings at the USPTO in 2025, up 65% from 40,468 in 2018, and is on pace for roughly 82,000 filings in 2026. With that volume comes brutal naming pressure.

Here is where 'Intakegate' becomes instructive rather than merely funny. Calling a legal intake tool "Intake" is about as descriptive as branding gets, roughly like naming a soft drink "Fizz". Descriptive terms are hard to register as trade marks without proof of acquired distinctiveness, so neither company will own the word. A legal fight over the name seems unlikely: "Intake" simply describes what the product does, and such terms are hard to protect as trademarks.

That is not a minor inconvenience. It means neither Harvey nor Legora can build a fence around the name. Any competitor, including the dozens of specialist intake-workflow vendors already in the market, can use it freely. A buyer typing "legal intake AI" now meets two giants plus a crowd of specialist intake vendors who got there first. Brand value, in the trademark sense, has not been created; it has been dispersed.

The Bigger Pattern: AI Companies Are Arriving Late

This is not an isolated slip. Despite their rapid commercial influence, most major AI companies did not feature among the highest trademark filers in 2026, suggesting brand formalisation in the sector is still emerging. The Clarivate Trademark Filing Trends Report 2026 flags this explicitly. The consequence is predictable: AI firms ship products, choose functional names, and only discover the register is occupied, or unprotectable, after launch.

Gemini, Grok, and Claude each had a senior US trademark owner before the AI product existed. Not one of those flagship word marks is cleanly registered to the company that made it famous. The pattern runs from the very top of the sector downwards.

As registers become increasingly crowded, finding a distinctive name that can be protected is becoming a challenge for global brands. IP counsel, brand teams and academics agree that new strategies are needed, from coined names to non-verbal marks, as AI and expanding portfolios put further pressure on a shrinking pool of commercially valuable trademarks.

Class 41 Filing Activity: A Signal Worth Watching

The filing data for education and entertainment services tells its own quiet story. According to AI Business Dispatch analysis of IPO data via TrademarkDashboard, Class 41 UK trademark filings stood at just 2,442 in Q4 2026, a sharp drop of 73% compared to the prior period. That decline may partly reflect the UKIPO's April 2026 fee increase (the first in nearly thirty years), which raised the online filing cost for a first class to £205. It also tracks a broader trend: brand owners are being more selective about which classes they file, knowing that Nice Classification 13, in force from 1 January 2026, creates a period where old and new classifications coexist, increasing the risk of misalignment between existing portfolios and new filings and potentially creating gaps in protection.

For AI-adjacent services that touch training, publishing, or content delivery, all Class 41 territory, that gap is commercially real.

The UKIPO Is Watching Too

Recent updates from the UKIPO, set out in its Corporate Plan 2026 to 2027, alongside comments from Charlotte Champion, Head of Trade Marks at the UKIPO, indicate changes to how trade marks are filed, searched, and examined in the UK. The UKIPO's Corporate Plan has identified the use of artificial intelligence as a priority, particularly in improving efficiency and accessibility; Champion noted that while AI is currently used in a limited way, its role is likely to expand, particularly where traditional search methods are less effective. That includes figurative and non-verbal marks, precisely the kinds of marks that IP strategy teams recommend when the word-mark pool runs dry.

Filings in this area are rising, driven partly by concern over AI imitations and deepfakes, and the UKIPO has signalled it may scrutinise such applications more closely.

What Brand Owners Should Do This Week

The 'Intakegate' episode is a prompt, not a punchline. If your product or feature is named after what it does, Intake, Assist, Review, Draft, Generate, run a clearance check before your next launch. A descriptive name that cannot be registered is a name that cannot be defended. Coined marks, portmanteaus, and non-verbal identifiers are becoming the only reliable route to protectable distinctiveness in a sector where the word-map is nearly full.

Search the UK register now at TrademarkDashboard. If your product name turns up three competitors and a refusal risk, you have a strategy problem, not just a branding one. Consult a qualified trade mark attorney before launch, not the morning after.