GoKawiilThe United States District Court for the Northern District of California has granted iyO’s preliminary injunction request, preventing OpenAI and Jony Ive’s new hardware venture from using the io branding. Here are the details.
A bit of background
Last year, Sam Altman and Jony Ive announced that their companies would join forces under a new venture called io to develop AI-powered products.
Soon after, a company called iyO filed a lawsuit, alleging trademark infringement. iyO secured a temporary restraining order, prompting OpenAI to scrub mentions of the newly formed venture from the web.
In the weeks that followed, iyO and OpenAI filed multiple documents indicating that the companies had been in touch prior to the io announcement, including product demos.
OpenAI argued that some of that outreach involved unsolicited information and investment requests from iyO, while iyO recently amended its lawsuit to allege trade secret theft.
In the meantime, iyO also submitted the results of a consumer survey to the court, arguing that the brands were similar enough to likely cause confusion among customers if OpenAI were to release products too close to its own offerings, such as connected headphones.
OpenAI, for its part, argued that its first product would not be an AI-powered wearable and added earlier this year that it no longer planned to use the io branding at all, asking the court to dismiss the case.
Which brings us to today.
Court sides with iyO
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