OpenAI Fires Back at Apple's Trade Secrets Lawsuit

OpenAI published internal communications Tuesday to challenge Apple's trade secret lawsuit, calling it 'careless, aggressive and oddly personal.'

• Apple sued OpenAI in July over two former employees: engineer Chang Liu and design executive Tang Tan.
• 25 years at Apple preceded Tan's move to OpenAI as chief hardware officer.
• Apple filed for a preliminary injunction Monday to block access to alleged confidential information.
• Apple offered to skip the injunction if OpenAI agreed to five conditions; OpenAI accepted three.

Why it matters: OpenAI's published messages are meant to reframe three core allegations in Apple's lawsuit.

• On Liu: OpenAI says Apple now concedes its own employees contacted Liu to locate files after he left.
• On outreach: Apple's outside counsel emailed the wrong person, confusing two Asian last names, OpenAI says.

How 17 sources split on this story

Where they split: The central dispute is whether Liu and Tan actively took confidential Apple information or were pulled back into Apple's systems by Apple's own access failures.

What’s next: The California federal court will consider Apple's preliminary injunction request as litigation continues.

• OpenAI rejected Apple's demand to let forensic analysts inspect its devices and network storage.
• Did Liu download confidential files before or only after Apple employees contacted him post-departure?
• Will the court treat OpenAI's public blog post as relevant to the injunction proceeding?
• What confidential information, if any, was used in OpenAI's hardware development?