New court filings show that Elon Musk is seeking information from a mystery South Korean entity, as Apple and OpenAI receive a deadline extension. Here are the details.
Apple and OpenAI seek more time, as Elon Musk seeks more information
A few weeks ago, US District Judge Mark Pittman rejected Apple and OpenAI’s request to dismiss Musk’s lawsuit, basically stating that he wants to see more evidence before deciding one way or another.
As a reminder, Musk decided to sue Apple after Grok failed to reach the top of the App Store following an update that brought new features.
He claimed Apple’s partnership with OpenAI makes it impossible for other AI companies to compete in the App Store, an accusation that Apple rejected.
Following the filing of the lawsuit, Apple and OpenAI attempted to dismiss the case, but their request was denied, as the judge requested additional documents.
In response, Apple and OpenAI asked for additional time to file their response, a move that’s fairly routine and, as typically happens, was granted by the court. Now, they have until December 11 to do so.
Interestingly, in the last few days, the court also granted a request made by xAI to seek evidence from a South Korean entity via an international judicial assistance order:
ORDER GRANTING MOTION FOR ISSUANCE OF LETTER OF REQUEST FOR INTERNATIONAL JUDICIAL ASSISTANCE PURSUANT TO THE HAGUE CONVENTION ON THE TAKING OF EVIDENCE ABROAD IN CIVIL OR COMMERCIAL MATTERS
Upon consideration of Plaintiffs’ Motion for Issuance of Letter of Request for International Judicial Assistance Pursuant to the Hague Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters, the Motion is hereby GRANTED and the Court APPROVES the proposed Letter of Request included with the Motion. Accordingly, the Court will execute the Letter of Request and the certified Korean translation of the Letter of Request with original signatures, to which the Clerk of Court shall affix original seals. Thereafter, the Court will directly transmit the Letter of Request and the certified Korean translation of the Letter of Request to the National Court Administration of the Republic of Korea.
There is currently no information on which South Korean entity xAI is seeking evidence from. A few hypotheses would involve either Samsung or SK Hynix, which provide AI infrastructure to OpenAI, or perhaps the company Kakao, which recently struck a partnership with OpenAI that integrated ChatGPT directly into the KakaoTalk superapp in South Korea, which is used by over 90% of the local population.
It may also be neither.
Be it as it may, while the identity of this mystery South Korean entity isn’t revealed, what we currently know is that Apple and OpenAI have until December 11 to file their response, and that someone, somewhere in South Korea, is about to get dragged into the case.
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