On Friday local time, a US federal judge indicated she may dismiss the lawsuit filed by Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI against its rival OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, in which xAI accused OpenAI of stealing trade secrets to gain an unfair advantage in AI technology development.
San Francisco federal district judge Rita Lin stated that her "preliminary view" is to grant OpenAI's motion to dismiss xAI's lawsuit, with a final ruling pending oral arguments scheduled for February 3rd. She also preliminarily noted that if the case is dismissed, xAI would have the opportunity to amend its legal claims.
Attorneys for both xAI and OpenAI have not yet responded to requests for comment.
xAI, under Elon Musk's leadership, filed suit against OpenAI last September, alleging that the company poached xAI employees to obtain confidential information related to the AI chatbot Grok.
OpenAI, renowned for its ChatGPT chatbot, countersued by claiming that Musk initiated this legal action because xAI's technological development couldn't keep pace with ChatGPT, characterizing the lawsuit as "a harassment campaign against competitors through baseless legal claims."
In a four-page written document outlining her perspective, Judge Rita Lin pointed out that although xAI alleged some former employees downloaded source code before leaving, the company failed to provide reasonable evidence demonstrating that OpenAI obtained or solicited the theft of trade secrets.
Lin further stated that xAI's complaint doesn't support a reasonable inference that OpenAI used its trade secrets, nor does it prove that these former xAI employees utilized the confidential information in their work after joining OpenAI.
The judge also indicated she would likely dismiss xAI's unfair competition allegations, noting that its claims regarding employee poaching "all revolve around hiring to obtain xAI's trade secrets, without identifying any other anti-competitive reasons for hiring these employees."
Lin has requested both xAI and OpenAI to respond to her preliminary reasoning during the upcoming hearing.
This lawsuit represents part of the ongoing legal disputes between Musk and OpenAI, with Musk being a co-founder of OpenAI who has also filed separate litigation against the company regarding its transition to a for-profit entity.
As the world's wealthiest individual, Musk is seeking damages totaling $134.5 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft in the lawsuit concerning the corporate structure transition, with jury selection for that case scheduled to begin on April 27th.
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