Elon Musk’s neural implant startup Neuralink has been trying to trademark two product names: Telepathy and Telekinesis. Musk has previously claimed that his company will be able to give people “superpowers,” so the desire to take ownership over these special abilities makes sense. Unfortunately for Neuralink, patent applications for Telepathy and Telekinesis have already been filed by a different business.
Wired reports that a lucid dreaming startup (who knew there was such a thing?) called Prophetic previously filed trademark applications for Telepathy in 2023 and Telekinesis last summer. Prophetic’s website, which says the company is “pioneering a radical transformation of the human experience,” is owned by a computer scientist named Wesley Berry. Berry’s company seeks to create a “non-invasive neuromodulation” wearable to “help people achieve lucid dreaming,” the site says, although there’s limited information online about how that would work.
As a result of Prophetic’s previous applications, the U.S. trademark office is refusing to allow Neuralink’s patent applications to move ahead, Wired writes. There still may be some hope for Neuralink to snatch them, however, if Berry fails to get his business off the ground. The outlet notes:
Both Berry and Neuralink filed “intent-to-use” applications, which allow businesses and inventors to reserve trademark rights before using the mark in commerce. Berry’s application for Telepathy was accepted in December 2024 and for Telekinesis in August 2025 but the trademarks aren’t fully registered until he shows that he’s actually using them in commerce. Berry has three years to do that from acceptance, otherwise his applications would be considered abandoned and Neuralink’s application would take priority.
All in all, this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal for the company, as there are plenty of other spooky terms Neuralink can trademark for its unconventional product base. How about Mind Control? That might work.
Over the past week, two additional people were implanted with Neuralink’s wireless brain-computer interface device. The surgeries were carried out on August 27 and September 3, 2025, at UHN’s Toronto Western Hospital, the medical organization announced in a press release on Thursday. The operations have been described as a “clinical trial evaluating the safety and functionality of Neuralink’s implant and surgical robot” (in addition to its creepy brain chip, Neuralink’s claim to fame is a 7-foot-tall robot named “R1″ that is responsible for executing the delicate procedure of suturing the chip’s electrified wires into the person’s brain). Both of the recent patients who were implanted with Neuralink’s chip are living with a spinal cord injury, the hospital said.
The first person to have the company’s chip implanted in his brain was a man named Noland Arbaugh. After a surgery in January of 2024, Arbaugh, who is a quadriplegic, said he was able to use the chip to play video games with his mind. Arbaugh still seems to be thankful for having participated in Neuralink’s operation, and recently spoke with several news outlets about how the new BCI chip had changed his life for the better.