Adobe’s Firefly Ignites AI Ambitions as It Pushes Back on ‘Captivate’ Trademark
Sep/16/2025
As Adobe leans into generative AI to drive its next phase of growth, it’s shoring up both branding and legal rights. The company filed two new trademarks—one for its Firefly suite and another for a stylized “FI” logo—signaling its intent to lock down visual and technical elements of its AI product ecosystem. Days later, Adobe challenged a competing “Captivate” trademark it claims encroaches on its educational software portfolio.
Adobe filed two major U.S. trademark applications on September 11 and 12, anchoring its generative AI footprint under the expanding Firefly brand. The filings cover downloadable software powered by AI models that generate and manage content ranging from video and audio to image editing and language translation. Among them is a newly stylized mark, dubbed “FI,” featuring an ‘F’ beside an ‘i’ topped with a star, enclosed in a rounded square—suggesting a visual identity for a flagship AI tool or interface. These filings coincide with Adobe’s broader AI push: its Firefly platform is already integrated into Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Creative Cloud apps. Adobe reported over $22 billion in revenue for 2024, with its genAI offerings and cloud-first model contributing significantly to growth. As the firm extends its reach into mobile with new Photoshop apps and AI-enhanced Experience Cloud tools, these trademark moves reflect a calculated strategy to own the look, feel, and functionality of the next generation of creative workflows.
While expanding its AI arsenal, Adobe is also defending legacy assets. On September 15, it filed a formal opposition against Verbit Inc.’s attempt to register “Captivate” as a trademark for speech recognition and captioning SaaS tools. Adobe argues that the mark creates a likelihood of confusion with its long-established Captivate software, widely used in e-learning, training simulations, and interactive multimedia. Registered for a broad array of computer software and educational services, Adobe’s Captivate is not just a product name—it’s a brand built around immersive digital learning. The opposition outlines that Verbit’s proposed use overlaps functionally and thematically with Adobe’s offerings, especially in sectors like enterprise education and content development. As Adobe doubles down on integrating generative AI into both new and existing products, protecting the semantic and commercial space around key brand names becomes more than legal housekeeping—it’s a necessary hedge in a market where software convergence is rapidly blurring categorical lines.
