OpenAI scrubs mention of Jony Ive partnership after judge's ruling over trademark dispute
OpenAI last month announced it was buying io Products, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion.
But it quickly faced a trademark complaint from a startup with a similarly sounding name, IYO, which is also developing AI hardware that it had pitched to Altman's personal investment firm and Ive's design firm in 2022.
U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson ruled late Friday that IYO has a strong enough trademark infringement case to proceed to a hearing in October. Until then, she ordered Altman, Ive and OpenAI to refrain from 'using the IYO mark, and any mark confusingly similar thereto, including the IO mark in connection with the marketing or sale of related products.'
OpenAI responded by scrubbing its website of mentions of the new venture, including a web page of the May 21 announcement.
In its place, the company had a message Monday that said the page 'is temporarily down due to a court order' and added: "We don't agree with the complaint and are reviewing our options.'
IYO CEO Jason Rugolo applauded the ruling Monday in a written statement that said the startup will aggressively protect its brand and tech investments.
"IYO will not roll over and let Sam and Jony trample on our rights, no matter how rich and famous they are,' Rugolo said.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
India Today
an hour ago
- India Today
Bengaluru techie buys home at 23 after rising from Rs 18,000 intern to Rs 24LPA role
A 23-year-old techie's post on Reddit's r/Indian_Flex has gone viral after he shared his remarkable journey from an underprivileged background to becoming a homeowner and software developer earning Rs 24 his Reddit post titled '23M | From Rs 18,000/month intern to owning a home - coming from below middle class,' the Bengaluru techie detailed how he built his life from scratch with no financial safety net, family savings, or fallback come from a family of four where my dad earns just Rs 12-15,000 per month. No family savings. No safety net. Just dreams, pressure, and relentless hustle,' he said in the post. After securing admission into a Tier 1 college purely through hard work, he landed his first internship at Rs 18,000 per month, later jumping to Rs 40,000. By July 2023, he was earning Rs 15 LPA, all while navigating life alone in biggest milestone came as he said: 'Bought my first home this month (yes, savings are gone and there's a loan — but it's mine).' He also shared that he now owns a MacBook, iPhone, and PS5 — things he once only dreamt of — and continues to enjoy treks, side hustles, and working remotely as an SDE-2 at a 'real chill company' earning Rs 24 LPA, the young man said that he isn't done yet. 'Next goal: Make my income Rs 50 LPA (start a business) by the end of this year,' he the post here: In the comments section of the post, several users congratulated the man for his accomplishments, while some offered advice."Congratulations! But remember, you don't need to do everything at once. Always save money when you have enough, then move on to the next goal. Also, buy health insurance for yourself and your family members. Start your life insurance early. If you begin soon, you can easily get coverage of over Rs 1 crore,' a user added, 'You're doing really well for yourself, and I'm in no position to tell you what to do — but just a piece of advice: now that you've got a house, consider focusing on building more financial security. That way, you can continue with your plans and repay your debts without interruption, even if you were to suddenly lose your job in this era of frequent layoffs. Once the loans are cleared, and you have some cushion, you can always redo the house the way you want."- EndsMust Watch
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
A $2,000 foldable iPhone can take the heat off Tim Cook
Picture the life of Samsung hardware engineers: Day after day, they toil at the cutting edge, devising almost inconceivable ways to defy physics. Components are shrunken, twisted, bent against their will. And then their work is unveiled to the world: the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 , an unfathomably thin folding smartphone. The company eagerly awaits the reaction of American smartphone buyers. 'Meh,' they say. Harsh? Maybe. But the sales won't lie. At this point, I don't know what it would take for Samsung Electronics Co. to engineer its way to a bigger slice of the US market, where Apple Inc. has a 56% share compared with Samsung's 25%. The consumer lock-in of iOS and the Apple product range is just too great. People love their iPhones. And yet, ask a Wall Street investor and she'll tell you the iPhone segment is tired. Revenue growth (globally) has softened — 1.9% in the last quarter, down 0.8% in the all-important holiday quarter before that. The predicted upgrade 'supercycle' from artificial-intelligence features has failed to materialize because they are delayed. That's had some close observers half-heartedly questioning Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook 's position. He can quiet at least some of that talk with the coming folding iPhone, which, according to Bloomberg News' Mark Gurman, is expected by the end of next year. That's a long way off but not too long. From a hardware standpoint at least, Samsung's Fold 7 is a blueprint for where the iPhone can and will go next. The Korean giant's foldable efforts began in 2019 with the introduction of the Galaxy Fold. The head-turning engineering achievement was held back by obvious limitations: The screen was fragile and quickly developed a prominent crease at the fold. When closed, it was rather fat — 15.5 mm. The release was delayed after reviewers found severe reliability issues. The devices have improved since, but the foldable market is still less than 2% of the overall smartphone pool, CCS Insight's Ben Wood estimates — 22 million foldable units sold in 2024. But with the Fold 7, announced at an event in Brooklyn earlier this month, there's more than a whiff of a suggestion that Samsung has made a foldable phone that everyday users might finally find appealing. The device has been well received in review circles. The $2,000 price tag is huge, granted, though that can be heavily discounted with trade-ins and other perks. And again, it's remarkably thin: When shut, the device is only six-tenths of a millimeter thicker than the latest iPhone 16 Pro. None of this alters the challenge, however, which is that anyone who might be tempted away from the iPhone has too many practical considerations that overrule the novelty or utility of a folding phone. The years of photos, videos and messages; the effortless syncing with MacBooks and iPads; the commitment to never be the one who turns the group chat green. Above all, iOS' straightforward familiarity, and the fact that Apple has never wavered on the quality of its software, is what makes the huge majority of its customers transition from one iPhone to the next without hesitation. Switching from iOS to Android is like asking someone to learn to write with their other hand. They see no compelling reason to put themselves through the effort. Some think that AI is the force that can break Apple's grip, given the company's well-publicized struggle to grasp the technology's potential. It's one reason, in addition to tariff fears, that Apple investors have been in a tizzy since the start of the year, worried that Cupertino has been asleep at the AI wheel and has put at risk the lasting appeal of the most successful consumer product in history. Shares are down more than 14% this year. These concerns are overblown as both a short- and medium-term threat. No AI company is likely to build a device that competes with the iPhone, given the supply chain mastery required, within at least the next five years or longer. There's little to worry about from existing players, either. While watching Samsung's keynote presentation to launch the Fold 7 and other new devices, it was notable that for all the talk of Apple's intense struggle to introduce AI to the iPhone, Samsung hasn't exactly achieved much to get truly excited about either. The standout AI functions were created by Google, a company that aims to get its AI into as many affluent hands as possible, which means making much of the functionality work on the iPhone as well. In addition to this, the most impressive AI functions on Samsung devices require sending data to the cloud — something Apple has been steadfastly opposed to for privacy and performance reasons. That's not to say Apple's AI problem isn't urgent. Seasoned Apple watchers rightly consider the recent fumbles an embarrassment. However, what investors seem to be overlooking is that Apple is on the cusp of a once-in-a-decade moment. The iPhone is about to receive a genuinely significant upgrade, a giant leap from the incremental changes consumers have grown accustomed to in recent years. The last time Apple did this, with the all-screen iPhone X in 2017, analysts underestimated the consumer appetite to drop $1,000 on a smartphone. They shouldn't make the same mistake again — a foldable iPhone is expected to go for $2,000 or more, from which the company is expected to enjoy strong margins. Volumes may be low at first but, from the offset, 'the allure of a folding iPhone would immediately lift the market by many millions,' Wood said. Investors should also consider what happened when Apple introduced its 'Max' models with larger screens in 2014, which some at the time considered to have niche appeal. 'Apple was late in launching a large form factor compared to Samsung and other manufacturers,' wrote analysts at Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. 'Now, large-format displays account for over one-third of Apple iPhone US unit sales.' There's a small chance the folding device will eat into other product lines, most obviously the iPad, though Apple has already started to reposition that device as a small computer rather than a large smartphone. There were cannibalization fears with the iPhone X, too, but its introduction led to the average selling price increasing by $118 over the subsequent two years, according to CIRP's weighted sales data (Apple has stopped disclosing its own figures). And, with more users carrying larger screens on the go, Apple can expect a bump in subscriptions to its streaming and gaming services. All of this amounts to a real upgrade supercycle, if not with Apple's first foldable next year, certainly with the iterations to come. I'm confident it won't take much to persuade a great number of Apple users to start buying what ultimately amounts to one device for the price of two.
Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
Is AI killing Google search? It might be doing the opposite
AI upstarts were supposed to lay siege to Google's search-engine dominance. So far, the defense is winning. Google's ubiquitous search tool has proven surprisingly resilient to competition from the likes of OpenAI, which is hoping people will skip the search box and ask its chatbot for answers instead. One of Google's lines of defense has been its 'AI Overview" tool, whereby users can see answers generated by its Gemini AI model hovering above their traditional search results. Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said Wednesday that this tool now has over 2 billion monthly users, up from 1.5 billion users in its last quarterly update. Google is also rolling out an 'AI Mode" that competes more directly with chatbots. 'We see AI powering an expansion in how people are searching for and accessing information," Pichai said in a call with analysts, adding that AI features 'cause users to search more as they learn that Search can meet more of their needs." Independent analyses suggest Google's AI search strategy is indeed having an impact. Search impressions—the number of advertiser links that show up in searches, even if they aren't clicked—grew by 49% in the year since the overviews were launched, according to a May report from BrightEdge, a search-engine-optimization firm. Those trends bode well for a search advertising business that accounts for more than half of Alphabet's overall revenue. The company said Wednesday that search revenue rose 12% from a year earlier in the second quarter to $54.2 billion, a record. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected $52.9 billion. The company's shares rose about 3% in after-hours trading. This outperformance underlines Alphabet's continued ability to monetize its search traffic. It has also helped that the advertising market has been relatively healthy in the quarter, despite some hiccups from tariffs and an uncertain macroeconomic outlook that had clouded the picture in April. Evercore ISI analysts said in a note this month that market checks showed ad budgets rising year-over-year in the quarter after a wobbly start. The real test of Google's search-engine resilience still lies in the future. One issue is that while AI overviews are boosting how many links users see, industry metrics show people aren't actually clicking on revenue-generating links as much. When AI overviews give people the information they seek, they don't need to. That is a puzzle Google will have to solve to keep itself on top. If it can show advertisers that they are getting a sufficient return on their spending through high-quality AI answers, the overview tool may lead to more spending and more revenue for Google. The other big unknown is how new AI-infused web browsers from the startup Perplexity and reportedly from OpenAI might change how people get information. Those challenges are in their infancy, and could make inroads against Google's Chrome browser. The impact to Google's revenue, if there is one, would only show up at a later stage, when the new entrants start building a substantial ad business tied to their software. What is clear is that Google has many tools with which to respond to the challenges. The company can modify Chrome to better compete against new entrants. It can imbue Gemini into other products. It can come up with software that others can't easily replicate, such as new AI-driven results in its 'Circle to Search" feature on Android phones, where users can circle anything on their screens and get feedback about it. Google also has a record of making defensive moves when it needs to. When search traffic was poised to shift to mobile phones two decades ago, Google acquired Android and developed its mobile-phone operating system. As Apple's iPhones became ubiquitous, Google started paying Apple billions of dollars to make its search engine the default in the company's Safari browser. And when the AI boom kicked off nearly three years ago, Microsoft's early AI push raised concern about Bing taking market-share from Google. That led Google to splash out on AI computing, and Microsoft didn't make much of a dent. Google's success has helped it build a cash pile it can deploy to keep up the defense. On Wednesday, Pichai said he was upping the company's 2025 capital spending to $85 billion from an earlier plan of $75 billion. Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi said the company would spend even more next year. There is no doubt that Google faces more serious threats to its search dominance than it has in a long time, not to mention unprecedented antitrust scrutiny across the the company is chronically undervalued compared with its peers. Based on its performance so far in the AI age, it looks likely to come out far less scathed than many skeptics believe. Write to Asa Fitch at
