OpenAI Co-Founder and CEO Sam Altman speaks at Snowflake Summit in San Francisco on June 2, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
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.'”
“This page is temporarily down due to a court order following a trademark complaint from iyO about our use of the name ‘io,'” OpenAI says in a message that now appears at the link where the post had been. “We don’t agree with the complaint and are reviewing our options.”
On X, Altman posted screenshots of emails from Rugolo seeking investment and a transaction involving Iyo’s intellectual property. Rugolo also wanted OpenAI to buy Iyo, Altman wrote.
Rugolo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But on X, he wrote that “there are 675 other two letter names they can choose that aren’t ours.”
The Iyo suit is among several legal challenges facing OpenAI, which is working to evolve its organizational structure to take on more capital as it builds out its AI models. OpenAI also is going up against The New York Times in a copyright infringement case, and separately against Elon Musk, who had helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 and is now suing for breach of contract.
Iyo is accepting pre-orders for its Iyo One in-ear wearable device that contains 16 microphones. Ive hasn’t released details about io’s product plans, but Altman told The Wall Street Journal that io’s inaugural device is not a smartphone.
Altman wrote in another Tuesday post that he wishes the Iyo team “the best building great products,” and that “the world certainly needs more of that and less lawsuits.”
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