The $500B Company That Didn't Think Anyone Could Own a Word

Welcome back to SavvyMonk, your daily dose of AI and tech news that actually matters.

Today: OpenAI just got blocked by a federal court from using a word it thought no one could own. The story is messier than it sounds.

Let's get into it.

Last Saturday, a federal judge in California issued a preliminary injunction blocking OpenAI from using the name "Cameo" in its Sora video generation app.

A Chicago start-up called Cameo, the platform that lets you pay celebrities for personalized video shoutouts. Founded in 2017, it built nearly a decade of brand recognition around that name.

OpenAI, the company valued at 500 billion dollars, which apparently looked at a trademarked brand name, decided it liked it, and used it anyway.

What actually happened

When OpenAI launched Sora as a standalone app in September 2025, it introduced a feature that let users create AI-generated video likenesses of themselves and others, including celebrities. It called the feature "Cameo."

Cameo the company sent the legal equivalent of "seriously?" and filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in October 2025.

In November, a judge issued a temporary restraining order, giving OpenAI a month to stop using the name. OpenAI's response was telling: "We disagree that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word 'cameo.'" They did not stop using it.

So Cameo went back to court. On Saturday, Judge Eumi Kim Lee granted a full preliminary injunction, ruling that Cameo was likely to prove trademark infringement and that OpenAI's continued use of the name would cause irreparable harm.

OpenAI's response this time? Nearly identical: "We disagree with the complaint's assertion that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word 'cameo,' and we look forward to continuing to make our case."

What the judge actually found

This is the part that should make OpenAI's legal team uncomfortable.

Judge Lee did not just find a naming conflict. She found that OpenAI was using an almost identical marketing strategy to Cameo's, describing AI-generated celebrity videos using the same trademark, in the same market, targeting the same users.

The order stated directly, OpenAI is employing a nearly identical marketing strategy to describe realistic AI-generated videos that are, at times, indistinguishable from the plaintiff's genuine Cameo videos.​

In other words, the judge found that a user looking for a personalized celebrity video now faces a choice: pay a real celebrity on Cameo, or generate a fake one on Sora's "Cameo" feature. That confusion is not accidental, and the court said so.

Cameo's CEO Steven Galanis put it plainly, "That would harm Cameo because the company's brand would be tied to AI slop and deepfakes featuring celebrities, when its videos are of real people."​

This is not a one-off

The Cameo case is part of a growing pattern. OpenAI is accumulating IP disputes the way most companies accumulate Slack notifications.

In November 2025, digital library app OverDrive sued OpenAI in Ohio over the "Sora" name itself. Earlier this month, OpenAI had to quietly drop "io" branding from its upcoming hardware products after a separate trademark conflict. Writers, artists, news organizations, and now tech start-ups are all lining up.​

The common thread: OpenAI moves fast, picks names that already exist, and then argues the trademark is too generic for anyone to own. That strategy worked until it stopped working.

Why this matters beyond the lawsuit

OpenAI is building products that directly compete with existing companies, sometimes using the same name, the same use case, and the same audience.

The Sora "Cameo" feature is not subtly adjacent to the Cameo platform. It is a direct substitute: users can generate celebrity likenesses in short videos on Sora instead of paying real celebrities on Cameo. For Cameo's talent and creators, that is not competition, that is replacement.

This raises a question the AI industry has not answered cleanly. When an AI company builds a feature that replicates an existing product and uses that product's name, is it innovation or blatant theft?

Courts are now being asked to answer that question one lawsuit at a time. And so far, the incumbents are winning.

The broader legal pile-up

AI companies are running headlong into IP law on multiple fronts simultaneously. Trademark disputes are just the most visible layer. Underneath, there are copyright cases over training data, right-of-publicity cases over celebrity likenesses, and patent disputes over model architectures.

The legal frameworks governing all of this were written before generative AI existed. Courts are improvising. Judges are making early rulings that will set precedents for an industry that has never had to think carefully about IP because it was moving too fast to stop.

OpenAI will appeal, argue, and find another name for its feature. But each ruling like this chips away at the assumption that AI companies can operate without the same IP constraints everyone else faces.

The bottom line

A nine-year-old start-up that helps people book birthday messages from C-list celebrities just beat one of the most valuable companies on the planet in federal court.

That is not a quirky legal footnote. It is a signal that the era of AI companies moving fast and naming things whatever they want is running into the slow, grinding reality of trademark law. The courts are not impressed by valuations. And "we disagree that anyone can own this word" is not a legal strategy, at least not yet.

Expect more of this. A lot more.

Category: Product Strategy

"Act as a sceptical venture capitalist evaluating my new product feature: [Describe Feature]. I want to know why this will fail. Let's think step-by-step. First, analyse the immediate technical debt this will introduce. Second, map out how competitors might commoditize this feature within 6 months. Third, identify the biggest friction point for user adoption. Finally, synthesize these steps into a 'Kill or Keep' recommendation."

Should AI companies face the same IP rules as everyone else, or does the pace of AI development justify more flexibility? Hit reply, I read every response.

See you tomorrow with another story.

— Vivek

P.S. Know someone following AI legal battles? Forward this. They can subscribe at https://savvymonk.beehiiv.com/