A software company that is itself called Mythos has gone to a federal court in Virginia to stop Anthropic from using the name for its AI model. The company says customers could mix the two up and that the damage to its business would be serious.
Mythos is based in Alexandria, Virginia, and sells a platform for nonprofit organisations, which it launched in 2015. It is asking the court for an order barring Anthropic from using the name, plus unspecified money damages.
The suit was reported by Reuters. Anthropic rejects the allegations. A spokesperson said the company plans to contest the case in court.
The name had already hit trouble at the US Patent and Trademark Office. In October, an examiner refused Anthropic’s applications to register “Claude Mythos”, finding it too close to three earlier MYTHOS marks, one of them for software that manages university endowment processes and donors. That refusal is an initial one, and Anthropic can still answer it or try to win consent from the owners of the earlier marks.
Anthropic’s applications covered two separate filings, and both were turned down on the same grounds: the examiner reasoned that the names look alike and the products overlap, so buyers could wrongly assume a common origin. Such first refusals are common and not final.
The two disputes are separate: the trademark office decides who may register a name, while the court case asks whether using it breaks the smaller company’s rights. For people who use the model, nothing changes while the case is pending, since no ruling or injunction has been reported. The court has to decide the trademark claims, and no hearing date has been reported.
