By Jonathan Stempel
Feb 9 (Reuters) – Google has been sued by Autodesk for allegedly infringing its “Flow” trademark to market competing AI-enabled software used to make movies, TV shows and video games.
In a complaint filed on Friday in San Francisco federal court, Autodesk said it began using Flow in September 2022 for visual effects, production management and other products, and was surprised when Google launched Flow software in May 2025 aimed at the same customers.
Autodesk said Google assured it would not commercialize Flow, yet applied that month to trademark the term in the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific, where applications are not generally available to the public.
The complaint said Google used the Tonga application to seek similar trademark protection for Flow in the U.S., and has marketed Flow at industry events including the Sundance Film Festival.
“Google’s false representation that it would always use a combination of its house mark and Flow was intended to buy time to allow it to swamp Autodesk’s place in the market,” the complaint said. “Despite the success of Autodesk’s Flow products, the much larger Google will likely overwhelm the Autodesk Flow products and Flow marks.”
The market value of San Francisco-based Autodesk was about $51 billion on Friday, while the market value of Mountain View, California-based Google’s parent Alphabet was about $3.9 trillion.
Google had no immediate comment on Monday.
Autodesk is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for the consumer confusion and alleged irreparable harm Google caused.
“We remain committed to protecting our innovations and ensuring fair competition in the global marketplace,” Autodesk said in a statement.
Last month, Autodesk said it would cut about 1,000 jobs, or 7% of its workforce, as it shifts spending to its cloud platform and artificial intelligence.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Porter)
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