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Comment by polygamous_bat | Hacker News Reader

Even if Satya is lying through his teeth, how much money and power would a gutted OpenAI have to devote to a protracted legal battle against Microsoft’s army of lawyers? It feels like robbing a person with cancer and hoping that they die before the case gets to the court, which feels very on brand with how Microsoft used to play things in early windows days.

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Yes, that's an excellent question, and my guess is 'none' because if they do MS will countersue immediately, they basically offered a truce with that message the other day: "we won't sue you and pretend everything is normal as long as you let us do whatever we want to do". With a nice flower arrangement around the words and if you look closely you'll see that each of the flowers is subtly embossed with the face of one of MS's top legal eagles.

> we won't sue you

Sue who? And for what?

Are you proposing that they sue the board for firing the CEO? What would be the theory?

I assume Microsoft will countersue with their own interpretation of the contract. However baloney that is, they only have to drag the case along until the former shell of OpenAI runs out of money and gives up the ghost. They could spend $10Bn on this and still come out ahead compared to buying OpenAI at market rate.

The fact that it annihilated their investment comes to mind.

The only defense the board would have is that they absolutely needed to fire the CEO to protect their precious non-profit charter. But for that to be the case they would need to show their homework. I don't see that happening and so they may well be exposed. At least two of the remaining board members are not positioned at all to take on Microsoft in a fight like that, they'll fold like chopsticks. Microsoft can keep this up for a decade if they want and not lose money on it.

And the crazy part is, even if MS “steals” the whole IP and then spends 10Bn (that’s a number longer than my phone number, btw) in defending the theft in court with legal shenanigans, they STILL come out ahead compared to buying OpenAI right away.

Seems like the only winners standing in this scorched earth is Satya and his shareholders.

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