Sam Altman takes his 'io' trademark battle public

theverge.com

7 points·spenvo··4 comments

I have no inside knowledge of OpenAI.

But man it feels like OpenAI is slowly but surely getting into a lot of drama that should otherwise be able to avoid?

Internal fights over Sam, for a while it seemed like a lot of people were leaving, conflicts over their non profit status / fights with folks who gave them money (Microsoft).

Is this name fight worth it?

I haven't kept sources but I think the actual fight is about iyo's product. They seem to have a similar product in the works.

> I think the actual fight is about iyo's product

Rugolo tweeted in part yesterday[1]:

"i'm looking forward to competing with you fairly on product; you just can't use our name."

and today[2]:

"we welcome their competition in the market with real products, they just need to do it under a different name."

[1] https://x.com/jasonRugolo/status/1937644215921741988

[2] https://x.com/jasonRugolo/status/1937936649356546233

IMO the names pronounce identically. They are in the same space.

When people tell each other about this "io" or "iyo" device, they will 100% be confused. Or most of them will only think of OpenAI's io.

The iyo guy is cringey for begging Sam that much, but he isn't in the wrong here. And the guy is right. OpenAI can chose one of billion other names that don't overlap with other products in the same space.

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