By the time Nvidia and two Arizona software companies told a Texas federal court on September 25, 2026 that they had resolved their trademark fight, the disputed name had already left Nvidia’s product. Its physics machine learning framework had been PhysicsNeMo since 2025. The lawsuit over its old name, MODULUS, kept going for more than a year after the switch.
Settlement Before Trial
According to Reuters’ report of the MODULUS settlement, published September 28, 2026, the parties asked the court to pause the case while they finalize their agreement. The suit, Modulus Financial Engineering, Inc. and Modulus Global, Inc. v. NVIDIA Corporation, began on April 5, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division.
Both plaintiffs are based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Modulus Financial Engineering owns the MODULUS registrations, and Modulus Global uses the name as its affiliated licensee. Their complaint describes a business in proprietary enterprise software, custom technology, analytics and AI development. Nvidia, the Santa Clara chipmaker, had put the same word on an open-source developer framework. The complaint traces that use to November 2021, when Nvidia announced that its SIMNET framework would become MODULUS.
Modulus alleged that the shared name could lead buyers to misread where each product came from or how the two companies were connected. It also raised a narrower worry: customers might mistake its proprietary software for an open-source offering. Nvidia denied infringing, Reuters reported.
A trial had been set for October 2026. The parties have kept the terms private, including whether any money changed hands.
Why The Remedies Matter In A Name Dispute
The complaint’s first count, under 15 U.S.C. § 1114, covers infringement of a federally registered mark. The second, under § 1125(a), reaches misleading signals about source, sponsorship or affiliation, and it also protects names that lack a federal registration. A third count alleged unfair competition under Texas common law. All three turn on how buyers read a name in the setting where they meet it.
Modulus argued that confusion could run either way: buyers might assume Nvidia’s framework came from Modulus, or they might decide Modulus was connected to Nvidia. When I prepare a likelihood of confusion analysis, I start with how close the marks are and how related the offerings are. Software makes the second step harder, because two programs can serve different buyers and still sit close enough to raise an affiliation question, as in another software dispute over the same product name.
The rights behind the claims came from Modulus’s registrations, including No. 4,755,560 for software goods and services and No. 6,624,640 for business consulting built on analytic and statistical models. USPTO records list March 22, 2002 as the claimed first use of MODULUS for software. A registration gives its owner legal presumptions of validity and ownership, while a claimed use date still has to be proved if priority is contested.
On September 16, 2026, Judge Robert Pitman narrowed what Modulus could recover at trial. His order denied Modulus’s motion for summary judgment, granted Nvidia’s motion on legal damages and denied Nvidia’s motion on equitable relief. Legal damages compensate a plaintiff for its own losses, while equitable relief, such as an order against future use, is decided by the judge. Because that kind of order looks forward, a defendant’s later conduct, including a rename, can bear on whether one is needed. After the order, Modulus could no longer seek legal damages at trial, its equitable requests stayed in the case, and liability remained for trial.
Nine days later, the parties reported their settlement. When I read a docket like this, a remedies ruling close to trial changes what each side can realistically win, and both sides can then weigh a negotiated outcome against a narrower trial.
A Software Name Travels Through The Developer Ecosystem
PhysicsNeMo is Nvidia’s open-source PyTorch framework for physics and scientific machine learning. Its repository points to engineering and science work such as aerodynamics, weather, structural mechanics and healthcare, which places it among researchers and engineers building simulation models.
Modulus describes its own business in a neighboring corner of the same broad field: proprietary enterprise software, analytics and custom AI development. In my practice, I look at how developers actually encounter tools. They pick up frameworks inside connected workflows, where one company’s library can feed another company’s analytics product. A data scientist might train a model with one vendor’s framework in the morning and evaluate another vendor’s AI platform that afternoon, and that shared setting can give an affiliation question room to grow.
A developer product name also travels farther than a logo on a box. It appears in the repository title, the install command, the import statement, the package registry entry, the documentation, tutorials, conference talks and partner pages. Each of those places repeats the name to a technical audience that may never visit the owner’s website, so when I assess a software name, I check those surfaces as closely as the product page. Open-source code spreads further still, since anyone can fork it, mirror it or wrap it in another tool, and each copy can carry the original name into places the owner never sees. Install and import names last longest, because code written against them keeps working, and keeps displaying them, long after the marketing name moves on to something else.
Nvidia renamed the framework PhysicsNeMo in 2025, according to Reuters, which made it the framework’s third public name, following SIMNET and then MODULUS. Its GTC 2025 presentation already described PhysicsNeMo as formerly Modulus, a label that let developers who knew the old name find the new one without starting over.
Even with that label, a rebrand has to reach every repository, registry entry and tutorial, and older copies, cached package names, archived documentation and forum answers keep the former name in circulation for anyone who searches it, a problem visible in how an open-source AI project handled a forced rebrand.
Clear The Name Before It Reaches The Repository
I start a software naming review with a short written brief. It records whether the product will ship as a downloadable package, a hosted API, an enterprise product or a consulting service, along with who will use it, how it will reach them, which countries matter and which extensions are likely. Licensing sits in the brief as a separate business decision, since an open-source license gives no extra room to use a word someone else has registered.
With the brief in hand, I search the exact wording and close variants in spelling, sound and meaning. Variants also include the name with added terms such as AI, Labs or Cloud. That search covers federal applications and registrations, state records and public use, and USPTO guidance itself points applicants past the federal database. For software, public use includes code repositories, package registries, product sites and developer documentation, where an unregistered name can have years of use behind it.
I then compare what each earlier owner actually sells, how its users might read an affiliation, when its use began, and whether its record is live, abandoned or under challenge. A different product category on paper can still leave room for confusion. An open web address settles even less, and the Groq dispute shows why an available domain can leave a trademark conflict unresolved.
Once a name survives that review, I keep the search results, dated evidence of first commercial use and a short note on why the name was chosen. Before any public announcement, I review whether a use-based or intent-to-use application fits, with a description that matches the actual offering. An intent-to-use filing can give the owner a nationwide priority date as of filing, once the registration issues.
Someone on the team should own the name after launch. A watch on new USPTO filings, plus a periodic search of repositories and package registries, catches similar names while they are still small, and the same owner rechecks the name when the product moves into a new market. If the name ever has to change, that owner coordinates the repository, package, documentation and customer pages so the switch happens in one move.
Put Your Product Name On Firmer Ground
If you are launching, expanding or renaming a software product now, review the name before more code, documentation and developer recognition attach to it. Each tutorial and integration page added before that review makes a later name change harder, and the Nvidia case ran for more than two years before the parties reported a settlement.
I handle that review personally. I search federal, state and common-law sources, analyze potential conflicts with existing marks, prepare and file the federal application, and help protect the mark after it registers, so you end up with a naming decision you can act on.
Bring your proposed name, the products it will cover and your launch plans, and contact my office to discuss your software name. We can review it before the next release puts it in front of more developers.
