00:00 Speaker A

Elon Musk facing defeat in his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman. After a three-week trial, Altman and his company are not found liable of all of Musk’s claims including that of putting commercial interests over the good of humanity.

00:15 Speaker A

What did the jury actually decide here?

00:17 Sarah

It was a question of whether Elon Musk just waited too long from the time when the shift happened between the nonprofit and the the uh corporate for-profit. The statute of limitations grounds allowed them to dismiss this.

00:35 Speaker A

The judge, it sounds like here is suggesting an appeal could be difficult. What why is why is she saying that, Sarah?

00:43 Sarah

That’s exactly the same issue that made this easy and decisive for the jury. Under California law, the charitable trust duty claim is pretty clear, a three-year limitation period. We’re well past that. And the second aspect of this, the unjust enrichment, that’s two years. So on both counts, uh, it was pretty clear and decisive. Even though Musk’s lawyer apparently kind of mouthed the word appeal or said the word appeal, uh I I think that also faces an uphill battle.

1:07 Speaker A

Did you see this as like, okay, this was a big legal issue for OpenAI. It’s now done, all eyes to the future, let’s do that IPO. Or no, Sarah, you know, there was a lot of testimony, um there was a lot of private messaging that’s now public and and is there a possibility that exposed any kind of governance issues that could be a problem down the road, legally speaking?

1:24 Sarah

No, I don’t think so. I think this is pretty open and shut. And so I would I I think the reason this is good for the AI industry is that it makes it pretty uh obvious that OpenAI can keep moving forward on its for-profit evolution, its partnerships, the reported IPO ambitions later in 2026. So, I think that this just kind of allows them to to hit the gas on all of that.

1:44 Speaker A

Does it set any kind of blueprint, Sarah, this case just for future issues of corporate governance, AI rights?

1:51 Sarah

Yes and no. And you know, every case is distinctive and this one on this um statute of limitations issues is kind of idiosyncratic. At the same time, it’s hard not to take a little bit of a sense of precedent here that the courts don’t necessarily want to be getting involved in this kind of he said, she said type of case. But we know that there are a lot of AI cases that are ongoing. You know, the New York Times has sued OpenAI. So the courts have taken up some AI issues. In this case, it’s clear that the court didn’t, um you know, that that the merits were difficult. But there will be continuing to be other issues like that that some of these copyright issues that are ongoing.