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Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/18/elon-musk-has-lost-his-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-and-openai/
182•nycdatasci•50m ago

Comments

mrcwinn•41m ago
Advice for Elon: you can actually use ChatGPT on the web or the desktop app to schedule reminders for you, like "file lawsuit against OpenAI."
jordanb•36m ago
The consequences of relying on grok..
LarsDu88•27m ago
Did you not read the article at all? He had to do this in 2021, well before such GPT apps existed.
freejazz•21m ago
That's not what the article stated. The jury had to find that the harms occurred prior to certain dates in 2021, not that Musk had to file before then.
rvz•37m ago
Sam is just too good at this game and as I said before [0] is far worse than Elon and also outsmarted him.

Of course this will be appealed but, as you see the claims just don't stick.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651664

armchairhacker•34m ago
Why do you think Sam is worse than Elon?
cozzyd•23m ago
Presumably better at being devious. Elon is sloppy...
an0malous•6m ago
I’m not a Sam Altman fan, but I think it’s debatable if he’s worse than the guy who did a sieg heil at a political rally
foofyter•35m ago
He didn’t lose anything, it was a technicality that is up for interpretation. It’ll be appealed for sure. Both sides would agree with that.
russellbrandom•34m ago
He lost in the sense that he filed a lawsuit and that lawsuit was dismissed.

It seems like a reasonable way to use the word, no?

donkyrf•31m ago
Obviously so.

You're either responding to an LLM or a badly malfunctioning human.

stirfish•23m ago
An account that's two minutes old, defending Elon Musk in a way that makes no sense.
foofyter•20m ago
Attacking me instead of looking at the evidence makes no sense.
jonlucc•2m ago
You didn't cite any to look at?
petesergeant•24m ago
I think it's fair to say the headline misleads, even if technically accurate. My initial read was that he had lost on the merits of the case, and not "jury rules Musk sued too late".
Legend2440•32m ago
He can appeal if he wants to, but if he had a good argument for why the statute of limitations shouldn't apply, he would already have brought it up.

Odds of him winning on appeal are low.

LastTrain•21m ago
Sure, losing is winning. I mean what are words anyway?
jhatemyjob•9m ago
There's no way that 9 California jurors are gonna determine the outcome of this. See the fine print at the end of the article: This is a developing story and will be updated. Headline is clickbait. Never bet against Elon.
2b3a51•33m ago
Reached for comment by TechCrunch, Musk’s lead counsel Marc Toberoff said, “One word: Appeal.”

One wonders on what grounds?

In the UK, in a civil case like this, the judge I think comments on the likelihood of an appeal avenue once the verdict has been reached.

Legend2440•31m ago
On the grounds of "I have infinite money and lawyers to drag this thing out forever, whether I'll win or not."
2b3a51•25m ago
Nothing like 'vexatious litigation' in the US?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vexatious-litigants

Legend2440•21m ago
There is, but it's a pretty high bar to clear. Merely exhausting one's appeals does not qualify as vexatious. He could keep going for years as long as his lawyers make vaguely plausible arguments each time.
ryandrake•30m ago
To be fair, is there any corporation or high net worth individual ever who, after losing a lawsuit, said “You know what, we accept the court’s decision that we were wrong and will be reflecting on how to do better in the future.”

Never. That never ever happens.

duskwuff•25m ago
> One wonders on what grounds?

Invent a time machine; send a lawyer back to file a new lawsuit within the statute of limitations.

artninja1988•22m ago
To any lawyers in here, is there an argument to be made for the statue of limitations not to apply here
pixl97•21m ago
Typically if they bring up a case like this a judge again will get pissy and dismiss it with prejudice.

You can try to file it again, but that gets to the point where the judge can throw your ass directly in jail for 30 days, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.

colechristensen•19m ago
He lost on the grounds of a statue of limitations defense which is exactly the kind of thing which is easily appealable.
qyph•12m ago
Are you a lawyer? IANAL but my understanding is it would be difficult for an appeal to succeed. Appeals courts only evaluate review matters of law, not of fact. Whether is has been more than the 3 year limit the statute of limitations places is a matter of fact I think. And the advisory jury makes this much harder to appeal. What do you think the grounds for appeal will be?
iamkrazy•32m ago
It's funny how they are still calling it "open"AI.
dbbk•30m ago
They have open models
wotsdat•29m ago
lol
shagie•27m ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20160220093339/https://openai.co...

> OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.

> Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact. We believe AI should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as possible.

---

https://web.archive.org/web/20180323231344/https://openai.co...

> We publish at top machine learning conferences, open-source software tools for accelerating AI research, and release blog posts to communicate our research. We will not keep information private for private benefit, but in the long term, we expect to create formal processes for keeping technologies private when there are safety concerns.

---

It's about open research.

https://openai.com/research/index/

Analemma_•21m ago
This was pretty much the quality of Elon's argumentation in court. Turns out "getting sick dunks" wins likes on Twitter, but it doesn't win lawsuits.
mustaphah•31m ago
The strongest evidence against Musk was Musk. His own 2017 emails supporting for-profit chats made the "betrayal" narrative very hard to sell.
dzonga•27m ago
Muskys problem is does things in the moment as a way to increase popularity without thinking that end up bitting him.

e.g the twitter thing - forced to buy when he didn't want.

mustaphah•24m ago
Extreme smartness has its own failure modes
tahoeskibum•23m ago
Did you read the article:"...that his lawsuits had been filed too late."
exe34•23m ago
To be fair, twitter ended up useful for him when he used it to buy his way into the US government and close down all the departments that were investigating his companies for breaking all sorts of laws.
bonesss•18m ago
As a business transaction: Twitters acquisition is among the worst deals in human history.

As means to buy an election an Presidency: highly efficient use of capital with an undeniable short and long-term ROI.

BeetleB•4m ago
> Twitters acquisition is among the worst deals in human history.

That he won't have to pay for. Shareholders will, as part of the SpaceX IPO.

ngruhn•17m ago
On the other hand, buying twitter was the turning point for his public image. Before that, he was Tony Stark. Now he's Lex Luthor.
Freedom2•16m ago
I wonder if a more "hardcore" team, by his words, would have handled this legal case better?
outside2344•15m ago
And the Trump thing, which cratered his car business
shimman•14m ago
Yeah but he was able to personally make the call to kill millions of people around the world, he's just going back to his roots.
blurbleblurble•11m ago
I don't believe in racial essentialism myself but I know someone who does

*ducks to dodge downvotes for not only making a bad dad joke but a political one*

jjordan•15m ago
There was no decision made on this basis. It was dismissed entirely due to the elapsed statute of limitations.
ls612•11m ago
He lost the lawsuit on a legal technicality about the statute of limitations not on substantive grounds.
trilogic•31m ago
Elon Musk lost? Judging by historical facts he nails it all the time, he is a winner. OFC California can´t cut it´s life line supply, but they will need to compromise somehow, Elon plan is ongoing :) Edit: He will surprise everyone like always
paxys•29m ago
> A nine-person jury found that Elon Musk did not bring his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman until after the expiration of the three-year statute of limitations.

Intersting outcome. So it's more of a dismissal on technical grounds rather than a complete loss.

sdenton4•29m ago
A dismissal on technical grounds, which is also a complete loss.
loxodrome•27m ago
Ending a trial over a bureaucratic technicality is not good justice.
paxys•24m ago
Statute of limitations is not a "bureaucratic technicality", it is the law.
jacobp100•18m ago
It can be both
wagwang•18m ago
Can some lawyer explain the rationale of statute of limitations? Like why does a robber get to get away with the crime if they are able to evade the police for x number of years. Is it just because the trials suck after a while cuz no one remembers anything?
throwway120385•11m ago
The easier scenario to think about where statutes of limitation really make sense is in collection of payment through the court system. Suppose you buy something on post-payment terms and then the supplier bumbles around forgetting to bill you for it. At what point should you reasonably be expected to pay the bill? In my state you get 7 years, and I think that's probably pretty generous because it covers the entire tab from when you get the thing to when you start a proceeding in court.

For a robbery that doesn't involve a weapon I think we should generally forgive and forget if it's been long enough. Nobody cared enough to bring action in court for whatever reason, and it would be awful for someone in their 40's to be jailed and brought into court for something that happened in their 20's. At that point if the government fails to prosecute that's on them, and on us for failing to hold them accountable. But 20 years is a long time and people can change over that timespan, so it probably doesn't make sense to hold a grudge for that long.

There are especially egregious crimes that have no statute of limitations like murder and sexual assault, but we might find our society better off for keeping the statute of limitations for injuries that we can recover from.

nradov•8m ago
Are you asking about criminal or civil law? This was a civil case. The general reason for imposing filing time limits is that it's better for businesses and society in general to have certainty about outcomes rather than perfect justice. If a plaintiff tries to dredge up old issues from many years ago it just wastes everyone's time and clogs up the court system.
tim333•7m ago
To a large extent.
qyph•6m ago
Not a lawyer but generally it is as you say: "because the trials suck after a while cuz no one remembers anything". It's not fair to have a trial when the evidence is unreliable because of the flow of time.

Encouraging timely action is another factor. Generally people with real harms will file sooner than later, otherwise why wait?

It's also to grant peace of mind -- so people can stop worrying about potential litigation after some amount of time.

badlibrarian•6m ago
Evidence degrades, memories fade, witnesses die. Generally the worse the crime, the longer the statute of limitations. Murder in most places has no limit.

Also, if someone hasn't committed a crime in, say, 20 years, there's questionable need to lock them up for three years to deter the behavior. Goal is to optimize the overall system even if some people slip through the cracks.

sobellian•3m ago
Not a lawyer, but - fugitives don't get to run the clock on statute of limitations.
dcow•18m ago
I am absolutely certain that if Sam was suing xAI and the case got dismissed on a technicality people would be lined up with screeds about the injustice of the situation.
freejazz•10m ago
That's just a point about how any Sam-boosters are.
Arodex•7m ago
Then why did the American justice system needed nine jurors when a clerk could have sufficed?

The American judicial system is completely Byzantine and rotten, from top to bottom. Worse than many third world countries.

freejazz•22m ago
The jury found against Musk - what exactly are you talking about?
pixl97•20m ago
Like any case involving legal matters, they are talking about things they deeply do not understand.
freejazz•11m ago
More shocking than the sheer incorrectness of the legal analysis I see here often is the confidence with which it is offered.
newaccountman2•5m ago
If you consider a statute of limitations to be a mere bureaucratic technicality, then you might as well say we shouldn't have the entire Anglo-American legal system.

Moreover, there is no "justice" here either way--it's just rich people suing each other.

tahoeskibum•24m ago
Anybody read the article:"...that his lawsuits had been filed too late."
modeless•13m ago
Yeah people are going to make up a lot of reasons why Elon lost that have nothing to do with the actual and very simple reason.
dcow•12m ago
Right. Nobody cares whether Musk won or lost (well maybe a few do). People actually following the case wanted to know whether OpenAI would be held in any way accountable for anything. And this “resolution” does not satisfy. Before Musk got involved, what happened at OpenAI was a BigProblem for many people.
pj_mukh•8m ago
Wait but that’s the crux of his argument that he was “wronged”. Not “wronged but only once xAI started competing with OpenAI”. He can’t prove the former, if the latter is true.

If anyone is/was truly still wronged by OpenAI changing corporate structure they are still able to sue and prove damages. Yet surprisingly no one has come forward on this.

tptacek•20m ago
I think a lot about how there's a very plausible alternate history where Elon Musk controls most of the frontier of AI.
sanderjd•15m ago
There but for the grace of god go we...
dragontamer•14m ago
You speak as if Elon Musk didn't buy tons of AI chips for full self driving (Dojo) and COMPLETELY flub it.

It's the same as always. Musk himself is an awful business man. He relies upon buying the success of others and taking over. Outside of that, he's kind of awful. Initiatives started by Musk himself almost inevitably fail.

fastball•3m ago
[delayed]
Aurornis•14m ago
I've thought about that, too, but it would require that all of the key individuals at OpenAI would have been willing to stay at OpenAI under his ownership.

That seems unlikely to me given how divisive he is. OpenAI already had one existential leadership crisis without Musk. I doubt it would have fair better under his notoriously difficult leadership. If he had wrestled control away, I would expect an exodus of employees going to new companies.

Hikikomori•10m ago
They're willing to work under the current snake, even got him back after he was removed, so why not musk?
HardwareLust•11m ago
And how much worse things would be if that had come to pass?
geek_at•9m ago
why would he run Anthropic?
tskj•11m ago
Annoying that it had to be Musk to take this fight, but isn't it very unfortunate that OpenAI is allowed to do this non-profit whoopsie we're now a for-profit thing?
energy123•8m ago
Laws were broken?
cityofdelusion•8m ago
This should clear the path to the IPO and lead to a VERY profitable payday for those holding OpenAI equity. Millionaires and billionaires will be minted ~one year from now.
granzymes•8m ago
Because no one has commented yet on the legal significance:

Musk lost today because the jury found that he waited too long to bring his claims. The jury answers only yes/no questions, so we do not know their exact thoughts, but it is likely they determined that the 2019 and 2021 Microsoft deals were too similar to the 2023 Microsoft deal that was the centerpiece of Musk’s lawsuit. Musk could have brought the same lawsuit in 2019 or 2021, meaning his claims were untimely for the 3 year statute of limitations.

Because the statute of limitations is a precondition, the jury was not asked to find any other facts. They may tell the press what they thought on other issues, or they may not.

The judge was prepared to immediately accept the jury’s finding, and said she agreed that the jury’s decision was supported by the evidence.

It is possible for Musk to appeal, but success is vanishingly unlikely. Whether Musk’s claims are barred by the statute of limitations is a quintessential question of fact, and appellate courts are extraordinarily deferential to factual findings by juries so as a practical matter it’s almost impossible to appeal this verdict.

Arodex•3m ago
>Musk could have brought the same lawsuit in 2019 or 2021, meaning his claims were untimely for the 3 year statute of limitations.

Why is a hypothetical ground for this decision? "You didn't complain immediately the first time you got robbed, therefore all the robbing since then is covered by a statute of limitation".

jdw64•5m ago
It turns out 'stealing a charity' is strictly defined in California law as 'commercializing it with Microsoft instead of my car company.' Glad we finally got that clarified
cubefox•5m ago
So you are allowed to violate the law if you aren't sued quickly enough.
thesdev•3m ago
I hope he appeals. Not cheering for Musk, cheering for the fight.

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