OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday criticized a lawsuit filed by hardware startup Iyo, which accused his company of trademark infringement.
Altman said, in response to the suit, that Iyo CEO Jason Rugolo had been “quite persistent in his efforts” to get OpenAI to buy or invest in his company. In a post on X, Altman wrote that Rugolo is now suing OpenAI over the name in a case he described as “silly, disappointing and wrong.”
The suit, earlier this month, stemmed from an announcement in May, when OpenAI said it was bringing on Apple
designer Jony Ive by acquiring his artificial intelligence startup io in a deal valued at about $6.4 billion. Iyo alleged that OpenAI, Altman and Ive had engaged in unfair competition and trademark infringement and claimed that it’s on the verge of losing its identity because of the deal.
OpenAI removed the blog post about the deal from its website, after a judge last week granted Iyo’s request for a temporary restraining order to keep OpenAI and its associates “from using Plaintiff’s IYO mark, and any mark confusingly similar thereto, including without limitation ‘IO.’”
