OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — The maker of ChatGPT is looking to stop another artificial intelligence company from using its name and trademark, saying that the competitor has no proof that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stole the idea for his billion-dollar business.
OpenAI told U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Tuesday it should be able to dodge counterclaims from Open Artificial Intelligence Inc., which it’s suing for using its trademark and name.
Rogers grilled the defendant’s attempt at cross-claims, saying that founder Guy Ravine did not lay a plausible foundation against OpenAI. She called his counter-complaint “verbose” with no substance pertaining to OpenAI's claims of non-infringement, unfair competition, false advertising and trademark infringement.
The judge said many such cases accusing successful companies of being founded on their ideas are filed in the Northern District of California each day. Elon Musk this month filed a similar case against OpenAI, she noted.
“There are plenty of people in the Bay Area who complain about what happens to them, and there are plenty of people trying to fund companies that can’t get funding,” the Obama appointee said. “He had a nice idea, but that’s not enough to plead a complaint when you have no commercial business.”
Open Artificial Intelligence Inc. owns the website "open.ai," which hosts an AI-powered text-to-image generator. OpenAI claims in an August 2023 lawsuit to be the senior user of the name “OpenAI” and the logos bearing that name.
OpenAI accuses Open Artificial Intelligence of trying to undermine efforts to register its trademarks and says it should not be allowed to profit from any “misappropriation” of OpenAI’s name or to divert demand for OpenAI’s products.
In court Tuesday, Rogers grew frustrated at what she called a lack of foundation for the defendant's claim of false advertising. Ravine’s attorney Jose Nino only provided an OpenAI blog post as evidence of misleading claims about its business.
“They’re claiming that their general commercial activities are open source and non-profit for the benefit of humanity,” Nino said. However, to meet Rogers’ demands, he said he would request leave to amend to add more support from statements on OpenAI’s website.
OpenAI attorney Robert Feldman said Open Artificial Intelligence did not give any support for many accusations in the cross-complaint, filed May 24.
Ravine claims that he conceived the idea of OpenAI in 2014 after talking to “top industry leaders,” and Altman and the founders stole those foundational principles to create the world’s most powerful AI company. He claims the founders used the domain after he refused to sell rights to the company.
“This is a case about somebody who’s unhappy, because he made a decision not to move forward when he met with these people," Feldman said. "In all honesty, there’s nothing else here, at least in respect to false advertising claims.”
Rogers questioned whether Ravine had any commitment for starting a business from OpenAI’s founders, despite his assertion in the complaint that Alman and the other founders committed $1 billion to his idea.
“There is nothing in this complaint (showing) that he had conversations with these people, that he had commitments with them, that they had any inclination to do business with him at all,” Rogers said.
The judge did not indicate when she may rule. She said she may allow both sides to trim the claims to make it easier to litigate.
"You have an uphill battle on this," Rogers said. "This is not a false advertising case. It's an incredible stretch."
Rogers earlier this year ordered a preliminary block on Ravine’s use of the trademark "Open AI" in commerce, saying that Open Artificial Intelligence's branding was likely to confuse consumers.
In that order she rejected Open Artificial Intelligence's claim that its trademark rights trump and precede OpenAI's, and said that Ravine's website in 2015 appeared to be either inoperative or created just before applying for a trademark.
OpenAI primarily develops artificial intelligence models and applications including the chatbot and automatic speech recognition system. Both companies are Delaware-based corporations that mainly operate out of headquarters based in San Francisco.
Ravine turned down offers from OpenAI's founders to buy the domain in 2015 and 2022, and told Altman that he would give up the website only if OpenAI donated millions of dollars to an "academic collaboration.”
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