OverDrive has filed a lawsuit in an Ohio court charging OpenAI with trademark infringement, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices over the release of its AI text-to-video generation app Sora. The complaint alleges that OpenAI intentionally gave the recently launched app the same name as OverDrive’s Sora, as well as "using a confusingly similar icon, color palette, and visual identity."
OverDrive released Sora in 2018 "to facilitate pre-K-12 students’ access to specifically selected and vetted, age-appropriate digital content, including e-books, audiobooks, read-alongs, picture books, magazines, digital comics, graphic novels from their school library, as well as related goods and services," the company noted in the complaint.
According to OverDrive’s lawsuit, if immediate steps are not taken to protect children from being confused between OverDrive’s Sora app and OpenAI’s Sora app, “schools have indicated that they will have no choice but to take their own steps to do so—by discontinuing their use of OverDrive’s Sora app.”
OpenAI attorneys had previously rejected the argument of OverDrive’s lawyers, upon learning of OpenAI’s intention to create Sora, that the new product was in violation of Sora’s trademark and that there was no reason to be concerned that Sora would create confusion in the marketplace. In its complaint, OverDrive cited numerous instances where they charge that product confusion was evident. One example of the confusion between the two names cited in the complaint is that numerous OpenAI customers have contacted OverDrive with questions about Sora accounts and technical issues.
Earlier this year, OverDrive had won an initial victory when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refused to grant OpenAI a trademark for Sora on the grounds it would cause consumer confusion. The ruling was reversed and OverDrive has appealed that decision.
As part of its complaint, OverDrive referred to the many other lawsuits that have been filed against OpenAI for copyright infringement over the alleged unauthorized use of published works to train OpenAI’s ChatGPT. "Now," OverDrive charges, "OpenAI is at it again, continuing to cross the line by incorporating even more third-party intellectual property without apparent care."
In its suit, OverDrive is asking the court to preliminarily and permanently enjoin OpenAI, and anyone associated with them, "from using the Sora trademark or any other mark, trade name, word or name similar to the Sora trademark that is likely to cause confusion, mistake, or to deceive, including without limitation by further operating any business under Sora."
OverDrive is also asking that OpenAI "be required to formally abandon with prejudice any and all of its applications to register the Sora trademark or any trademark consisting of, incorporating, or containing the Sora trademark or any counterfeit, copy, confusingly similar variation, or colorable imitation thereof on any state or federal trademark registry."
OverDrive is further seeking the court to order OpenAI to destroy all packaging, labels, signs, brochures, advertisements, promotional items, and any other media, documents or things that carry the Sora name and that OpenAI should be forced to pay "actual damages it has suffered as a result of OpenAI’s trademark infringement and unfair competition."
