The United States District Court for the Northern District of California has granted iyO’s preliminary injunction request, preventing OpenAI and Jony Ive’s new hardware venture from using the io branding. Here are the details. A bit of background Last year, Sam Altman and Jony Ive announced that their companies would join forces under a new venture called io to develop AI-powered products. Soon after, a company called iyO filed a lawsuit, alleging trademark infringement. iyO secured a temporary restraining order, prompting OpenAI to scrub mentions of the newly formed venture from the web. In the weeks that followed, iyO and OpenAI filed multiple documents indicating that the companies had been in touch prior to the io announcement, including product demos. OpenAI argued that some of that outreach involved unsolicited information and investment requests from iyO, while iyO recently amended its lawsuit to allege trade secret theft.…