OpenAI drags Apple’s lawsuit into the court of public opinion
The Verge Jess Weatherbed ● Covered by 7 sources
OpenAI clapped back at Apple's trade-secret lawsuit, posting emails and texts to poke holes in it. It's less a legal filing than a PR counterattack before any judge even rules.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Jess Weatherbed — read the original for the full story.
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Apple's trade-secrets lawsuit against OpenAI has spilled out of the courtroom and onto the internet. Late last night, OpenAI published a blog post bluntly titled "Apple is getting this wrong," calling the suit "careless, aggressive, and oddly personal," and backing that up with screenshots of iMessages and emails meant to poke holes in Apple's narrative.
The case centers on two former Apple employees who now work for OpenAI: Chang Liu, once an iPhone engineer and now part of OpenAI's technical team, and Tang Tan, who spent 25 years at Apple overseeing iPhone and Apple Watch design before becoming OpenAI's chief hardware officer. Apple claims the pair carried confidential details about unreleased products with them, and this week asked for a preliminary injunction to stop Liu, Tan, and OpenAI from touching any of that alleged information while the case proceeds.
Apple's complaint gets specific about Liu — accusing him of keeping a company laptop, using a lingering authentication flaw to get into Apple's cloud storage weeks after leaving, downloading confidential files, and even coaching a colleague on how to do the same without tripping Apple's security team. OpenAI tells a different story: it says Apple's own employees asked Liu for help finding files after he'd already left, and that Apple is now quietly blaming "residual access" — something OpenAI describes as a recurring problem caused by Apple failing to properly cut off system access when people depart.
Tan doesn't escape the dispute either. Apple alleges he pressed job candidates during interviews for confidential Apple information and asked them to show off components they'd worked on internally. OpenAI's response is short and firm: Tan has always told the team not to touch, or even want, confidential material from other companies.
The messiest thread might be the smallest one. OpenAI says Apple's own outside lawyers admit they emailed the wrong person early on, mixing up two Asian surnames, and that Apple has conceded it never actually spoke with OpenAI's general counsel despite implying otherwise. It's a small clerical mistake dressed up as evidence of stonewalling, and OpenAI clearly wants that contrast sitting in public view before this ever reaches a judge.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Publishing private emails and texts before a courtroom even opens is a tell — it means the fight is as much about headlines as about law. Apple's lawsuit leans heavily on optics too, casting departing hires as thieves rather than admitting its own access controls are leaky. Neither company looks especially good here, but the real story is how normal it's become for Silicon Valley's talent wars to be fought with press releases instead of just filings.
Read more about this at: The Verge