OpenAI Tells Judge Apple’s Trade Secret Lawsuit Is ‘Rotten to Its Core’

OpenAI has officially asked a federal judge to throw out Apple’s high-profile trade secrets lawsuit. The AI company argues that the legal action is completely meritless and merely an attempt by Apple to cover up its own struggles in keeping top technical talent (via Bloomberg).

In a 31-page motion filed in federal court in Northern California, attorneys for OpenAI hit back at Apple’s claims that the company ran an organized corporate espionage campaign to steal proprietary hardware designs and secrets.

Apple originally filed the lawsuit, accusing OpenAI of coaxing former Apple workers into handing over confidential files, hardware blueprints, and trade secrets to fuel OpenAI’s ambitious hardware division. That division expanded heavily after OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s hardware startup, io Products, which was co-founded by former long-time Apple design executive Tang Yew Tan.

OpenAI’s legal team fired back directly in the court filing, turning Apple’s own harsh language back against it. The filing points out that the word “fail” or variations of it appear nearly 50 times throughout the brief, underlining OpenAI’s stance that Apple is using the legal system to mask its own internal retention and AI integration issues.

Apple’s original complaint singled out specific former employees, including Tang Yew Tan, who served as Vice President of Product Design for iPhone and Apple Watch for over two decades, and senior systems engineer Chang Liu. Apple claimed Liu exploited an authentication bug after leaving the company to download confidential hardware files for weeks.

Apple recently escalated matters by asking the judge for a preliminary injunction, seeking to block OpenAI from using any alleged trade secrets while the lawsuit plays out in court. OpenAI has countered that the injunction request relies on false information and is entirely unnecessary.

OpenAI faces a court-ordered deadline of August 17 to formally respond to Apple’s preliminary injunction motion. The federal judge overseeing the case is scheduled to hear oral arguments from both legal teams on October 1.