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Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

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Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#501

Post by epolanski »

granzymes wrote: post #81

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 law…

Don't forget rich people spend their lives suing for the sake of annoying each other.

More often than not the sentences are irrelevant, it's known that it's a lost cause, and they will still proceed if it can bring any dirt or bad publicity or annoyance to the counter party.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#502

Post by pocksuppet »

DANmode wrote: post #380
pocksuppet wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This has always been, and will always be, the case. It's the same in things like copyright law - you can violate any software license if the copyright holder doesn't know you're doing it, or doesn't want to sue you, or doesn't sue you in time. It's the same with taxi medallions or hotel regulations if you're trying to start Uber or AirBNB.

> It's the same with taxi medallions or hotel regulations if you're trying to start Uber or AirBNB. They didn’t do any lobbying? ^_^

They pretty much just broke the law, scaled fast and then their lobbying was "the whole population would hate you if you shut us down now"

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#503

Post by maratc »

jmyeet wrote: post #209
Arodex wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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".

There are several legal principles in play here. Note that these are civil trial issues and when you're talking about "robbing", you're likely talking about a criminal issue. These are: 1. Estoppel. If a party relies on your conduct then you can lose the right to sue over it; 2. Laches. This is a defense against prejudicial conduct, typically by waiting too long to take action; 3. Waiver. Your conduct can waive your…

> the victims are children and unable to make a criminal complaint.

I thought that children at any age can complain to the police. The filing side on the criminal case is "State" -- or "People", or "Rex/Regina" (and not the person complaining, regardless of the age.)

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#504

Post by Traster »

atom_arranger wrote: post #295
mrhottakes wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transactions like that happen all the time and are not problematic if handled legally. Any of the interested parties could have sued over it, but none have.

The interested parties would be taxpayers. I think some groups are trying to look into it. The issue is that they did R&D as a charity, donations to which are tax deductible, there may also be other benefits to being a charity during R&D but that’s a big one, then once the thing works, setup a for profit, sell ip at “fair value”, get some investment, then things are ready for business. I read there’s no statute of li…

The interested parties are the taxpayers, and in this case the legal mechanism for that was the California Attorney General approving OpenAI's restructuring. Here's the MOU: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/Final...

There is no loophole here.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#505

Post by Traster »

overgard wrote: post #423

My suspicion is that winning might have been a secondary goal. When OpenAI goes to IPO, all the testimony of former executives about Altman's behavior is going to be in the public record. A lot of that testimony makes OpenAI sound very chaotic and poorly run. That could prevent large institutional investors from wanting to take the risk.

I think you're being too generous, one of the big take aways from the trial was that Musk's other AI effort - xAI is a total shit show, and that most of the experts here don't think Musk understands how to run an AI lab. Which is a problem since Musk wants to IPO SpaceX with a story about AI. Admittedly there's been lots of other news that also embarases him in this area.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#506

Post by adastra22 »

2b3a51 wrote: post #27
Legend2440 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the grounds of "I have infinite money and lawyers to drag this thing out forever, whether I'll win or not."

Nothing like 'vexatious litigation' in the US? https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vexatious-litigants

You are allowed your appeals. That's part of your constitutional right to due process.

There are some exceptions to this, but they are rare and usually only employed in extreme situations (aka things which would get the lawyers involved debarred).

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#507

Post by adastra22 »

dnnddidiej wrote: post #307
gamblor956 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Once the jury made its finding of fact as to when the event giving rise to the claim occurred (and to when the SOL clock would start ticking), the appeal would have to determine that the jury could not have reasonably made such a finding. It's very, very rare for an appeals court to overturn a finding of fact.

Out interest how does it work with new evidence then? I guess in civil less likely than criminal (new DNA technology etc.)

What new evidence would overturn the fact that there was more than 3 years between the relevant events?

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#508

Post by keybored »

shimman wrote: post #166
the_doctah wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah canceling USAID programs that made the difference between life and death for millions of people around the world. Were you in a coma during DOGE in 2025 or are you being purposely selective in your memory? Nothing hysterical about killing millions of people, hopefully there becomes a movement in the US to not only try Elon Musk at say the International Criminal Court (which we all know will lead to successful co…

> Also the US should start throwing some oligarchs in prison to help rehabilitate its image after people start blaming us for causing famines and more deaths due to the recent imperial project that has become a total shit show.

America’s image was based on media domination with a megaphone going in one direction. Let’s not go back to delusion and fantasy.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#509

Post by DeusExMachina »

granzymes wrote: post #98
granzymes wrote: post #81

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 law…

My own thoughts: If I had been on the jury, I would have found against Musk on every point. His lawyers created a “3 phases of doubt” to try and sidestep the statute of limitations, but it was clearly bogus and he was on notice of OpenAI creating a for-profit in 2019. Musk was perfectly happy to have OpenAI be a for-profit, a non-profit with an attached for-profit (the current structure), or even just absorbed into T…

As I read around, this lawsuit raised an important question: can a non-profit become a for-profit company?

To that extent, what Musk was happy or unhappy with is irrelevant. What is actually allowed by the law is more important.

However, it seems that the lawsuit was not phrased that way and Musk just looked for damages to himself. In that frame it's not much of a surprise that things ended this way.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#510

Post by Traster »

atom_arranger wrote: post #137

Aside from the disagreements between these parties, what about the precedent of running a non-profit, and then transferring all IP to a for profit when it’s convenient to do so? I wonder if the government or taxpayers have a case to bring regarding that.

Can we just bring some reality to this conversation. The non-profit still exists, it owns a significant chunk of a now almost trillion dollar company, and the for-profit wouldn't be profitable if it weren't for Billions of dollars of investment from Microsoft.

There is no counter factual where OpenAI exists as a non-profit and still inexplicably gets handed billions of dollars of compute to train LLMs. The for-profit company is a different thing from the non-profit and it exists for perfectly understandable reasons and I'm unsure why anyone other than Elon Musk pretends this doesn't make sense.

What is your proposed counter factual where the non-profit entity retains all ownership of the venture, but somehow finds hundreds of billions of dollars to train LLMs?

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