This time, “Optimus” has kicked a steel plate, and the lawsuit with Apple may take many years to fight.

Apple’s style in court has always been to go hard to the end.
It fought with Samsung in the smartphone patent war from 2011 to 2018; along the way, it even battled all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and it was only settled seven years later.
And the probability that this case gets dismissed is extremely low.
The materials Apple submitted this time have already far exceeded the threshold for allowing the case to continue being heard. In the complaint, it lists in detail the specific people and actions involved in the alleged theft of trade secrets. The lawsuit filing is 41 pages long.
The litigation process for this type of case is also very complex.
Trade secret cases can’t be simply compared to two products. And since OpenAI’s hardware hasn’t been made public, once the case enters discovery, both sides need to obtain a large amount of internal documents and communications to determine which materials were taken and whether they were used in R&D.
This lawsuit is also colliding with OpenAI’s most important hardware phase. If it drags on for years, it will almost cover the entire product development cycle.
While continuing to develop equipment, OpenAI also has to keep investing time and money to respond in court, and the timeline for going public will add another long-term risk.