DESIGN GENIUS OR TECH MORON? OPENAI FORCED TO NUKE JONY IVE CONTENT AFTER TRADEMARK BLUNDER THAT A TODDLER COULD’VE AVOIDED
OpenAI, the company valued at roughly the GDP of several medium-sized nations combined, has embarrassed itself spectacularly by failing to perform the most basic f@#king trademark search before splashing Sir Jony Ive’s “io” all over the internet.
BILLION-DOLLAR BRAINS, KINDERGARTEN LEGAL TEAM
In what industry experts are calling “the dumbest sh!t they’ve seen since Meta tried naming itself after a term already used by literally everyone,” OpenAI has been forced to scrub promotional materials featuring their $6.4 billion partnership with Ive’s hardware startup after earbud maker iyO sent what was presumably the world’s most gleeful cease-and-desist letter.
“This is exactly what happens when you let silicon-based thinking rectangles run your legal department,” explained Dr. Sue Yurass, head of Obvious Business Decisions at Harvard. “Any human with access to Google and three functioning brain cells would’ve checked if ‘io’ was already taken before spending billions on it.”
THE MOST EXPENSIVE TYPO IN HISTORY
Sources close to the deal report that Altman and Ive spent weeks debating between the names “io” and “oi” before settling on the former, unaware that simply inverting the letters would have saved them approximately $47 million in legal fees and public humiliation.
“What these tech geniuses don’t understand is that the rest of us poor schmucks have been doing basic trademark searches since the invention of dictionaries,” said Professor Michael Hunt, trademark law expert. “It’s almost as if being worth billions of dollars actually makes you less capable of performing simple tasks.”
THE VIDEO NOBODY WAS ALLOWED TO SEE BUT EVERYONE ALREADY DID
The nine-minute promotional video, which was removed from OpenAI’s official channels faster than Sam Altman can say “unintended consequences,” remains available on YouTube where it has already been downloaded, memed, and permanently etched into the internet’s collective memory.
In the now-infamous footage, Ive and Altman can be seen smugly discussing their “revolutionary partnership” while gently caressing minimalist prototypes that sources describe as “iPhones but somehow even more pretentious.”
EXPERTS WEIGH IN
“This is what happens when your company valuation exceeds your combined IQ,” explained financial analyst Richard Hertz. “OpenAI somehow managed to spend $6.4 billion without a single person asking, ‘Hey, should we maybe check if someone else is using this name?'”
Statistics show that approximately 100% of small business owners perform trademark searches before naming their coffee shops, yet somehow only 2% of tech billionaires consider it necessary when launching world-changing ventures.
THE IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE OF RICH NERDS
Industry insiders report that Altman has already pivoted to damage control mode, telling staff that “trademark infringement is just another form of artificial general intelligence” and that “being sued for basic business errors is actually a sign we’re moving too fast for conventional legal frameworks.”
Meanwhile, the executives at iyO are reportedly celebrating with champagne baths while their legal team drafts what industry experts predict will be “the smuggest settlement demand letter in the history of corporate law.”
At press time, sources confirmed OpenAI’s legal team is now frantically trademarking every possible two-letter combination in the English language, just as Jony Ive reportedly considers rebranding to “ai” just to watch the world burn again.
