Ex Populus, the Delaware company behind the Ethereum blockchain gaming network Xai, has filed a federal trademark infringement lawsuit against Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI.
The lawsuit focuses on market confusion between Ex Populus’ XAI trademark (federatively registered since June 2023) and the xAI company Musk announced in July 2023.
Gaming networks claim first dibs as Musk’s AI venture enters market
Ex Populus operates one of the world’s highest-transaction-volume blockchain gaming networks, providing AI-powered gaming solutions and autonomous software systems for multiple platforms.
Musk announced in November 2024 that xAI would “found an AI game studio to make gaming great again,” which plays directly into Ex Populus’ established gaming territory.
The post, which was read over 36 million times, further fueled consumer confusion between the two brands operating in overlapping markets.
The complaint details widespread market confusion, including xAI’s own AI assistant, Grok, incorrectly informing users that “XAI_GAMES refers to xAI’s game plans.”
News algorithms and social media posts continually conflated the two companies, causing Ex Populus to lose control of its brand reputation.
Ex Populus faces further reputational damage as Musk’s public image becomes polarized.
The company cited incidents in which xAI’s Grok chatbot was taken offline for promoting violence and making racist comments, creating negative brand associations for its gaming ecosystem.
The US Patent and Trademark Office has suspended several of Musk’s trademark applications, including “xAI” and “XAI GROK,” due to the possibility of confusion with Ex Populus’ prior rights.
The defendants attempted to obtain senior trademark status by purchasing the abandoned “X.AI” registration, but Ex Populus argued that the previous owner, Bizzabo Ltd., had abandoned the trademark in October 2021.
Musk’s xAI plans to sue Apple and fight trademark infringement
In the Ex Populus lawsuit, Musk’s legal team attempted to pressure the company to give up its trademark rights by threatening to initiate cancellation proceedings.
On August 7, 2025, xAI’s lawyers warned that unless the gaming companies agreed to xAI’s global trademark registration, they would apply to cancel the federal registration of Ex Populus.
The latest lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction barring xAI from using the disputed trademarks, cancellation of the defendants’ existing trademark registrations, and invalidation of five pending applications.
Ex Populus seeks monetary relief, including disgorgement of profits, actual damages, treble monetary relief under federal law, and punitive damages under state law.
In addition to the Ex Populus lawsuit, xAI recently said it plans to sue Apple for alleged antitrust violations, claiming the tech giant unfairly favors OpenAI’s ChatGPT in App Store rankings while suppressing xAI’s Grok chatbot.
While the lawsuit comes at the height of a market rally, it falls within a broader category of intellectual property disputes that has seen numerous cryptocurrency and blockchain companies clash over brand rights.
XAI token plunges 96% as intellectual property conflict intensifies
Several high-profile cases have occurred in recent months involving NFT platforms and meme coin creators defending their brand rights against alleged infringers.
Yuga Labs, creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, recently won a $9 million trademark lawsuit, but that lawsuit was largely overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in July.
The court ruled that the key issue of consumer confusion in the company’s case against artist Ryder Ripps needed to be decided by a jury, not summary judgment.
Similarly, earlier this year, Solana-based platform Pump.fun faced a similar intellectual property challenge when law firms Burwick Law and Wolf Popper issued a cease and desist letter regarding the unauthorized creation of tokens.
The companies filed a class-action lawsuit, accusing Pump.fun of facilitating the creation of more than 200 tokens that infringed their trademarks.
Notably, the latest lawsuit comes amid challenges for Ex Populus’ XAI token, which has plummeted 96.7% from its all-time high of $1.60 reached on March 11, 2024.
The gaming network’s token has struggled due to general weakness in the early cryptocurrency market and a noticeable decrease in interest in blockchain gaming platforms.
A successful legal outcome could put the XAI token back in the market spotlight, especially if the case draws significant media attention to trademark disputes.
The community is already speculating whether Musk will consider acquiring the gaming company outright to resolve the conflict, which would be a positive trigger for the token.
