A federal judge in Texas has sarcastically encouraged Apple and OpenAI to move their headquarters to Fort Worth, even as he reluctantly agreed to keep a major antitrust lawsuit filed against them by Elon Musk’s companies in his court.
The lawsuit, filed by Musk’s X and xAI, accuses Apple and OpenAI of an “anticompetitive scheme” to dominate the AI market. Musk claims that Apple unfairly favors OpenAI’s ChatGPT in its App Store rankings, making it harder for his own AI, Grok, to compete.
The case was filed in a federal court in Fort Worth, a popular destination for conservative plaintiffs who hope to get a favorable ruling from the court’s Republican-appointed judges. Judge Mark Pittman, whom Donald Trump appointed, has been critical of this “forum-shopping” practice in the past.
In his sharply ironic order, Judge Pittman pointed out that the case has “at best minimal connections” to Fort Worth. Apple’s and OpenAI’s headquarters are in California, and X is based about 200 miles south. Still, because neither Apple nor OpenAI asked for the case to be moved, he said he had little choice but to keep it.
“Given the present desire to have venue in Fort Worth… the Court highly encourages the Parties to consider moving their headquarters to Fort Worth,” the judge wrote, even providing a link to the city’s business services website “to get the process started.”
His frustration was clear, but he said his hands were tied by a higher court that had made it very difficult to transfer cases. For now, the battle between the tech titans will be fought in Texas.
