Elon Musk loses court bid to dismiss OpenAI’s harassment claim

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Elon Musk must face claims by OpenAI that his attacks on the startup in court and in the media amount to a “years-long harassment campaign,” a federal judge ruled.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Tuesday refused a request by the world’s richest person to brush aside allegations that he has weaponized legal claims, social media posts and statements in the press to try to sabotage OpenAI’s success — all to gain advantage for his own generative artificial intelligence startup, xAI.

The ruling is the latest twist in a court fight that has played out since last year, when Musk accused OpenAI of abandoning its founding purpose as a charity by accepting billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft Corp. starting in 2019, the year after he left OpenAI’s board. Musk launched xAI in 2023.

Gonzalez Rogers didn’t address the merits of OpenAI’s counterclaim that Musk has relentlessly sought to damage the startup, but she concluded that the counterclaim filed in April is legally sufficient to proceed. The judge also dismissed a few of Musk’s claims against OpenAI and Microsoft.

The judge noted that each side has accused the other of hypocrisy.

“The gamesmanship of both sides is obvious, as each flip flops,” she wrote.

A trial in federal court in Oakland, California, is scheduled for March.

A lawyer for Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.