OpenAI says Apple’s own security practices undermine its trade secrets case
TechCrunch Sarah Perez ● Covered by 7 sources
OpenAI wants Apple's trade-secrets suit tossed, arguing Apple's own sloppy security is the real story here. Turns out a manager stayed logged into a departed engineer's iCloud, texting him for help.
OpenAI has filed its response to Apple's trade secrets lawsuit, and the strategy is less "we didn't do it" and more "you never locked the door." Instead of disputing whether former Apple engineers now at OpenAI touched sensitive hardware files, the motion goes after Apple's own offboarding habits, arguing the company can't credibly call something a protected trade secret when it left the vault wide open.
The filing gets specific. OpenAI submitted text messages showing an Apple manager stayed logged into the personal iCloud account of Chang Liu, a former Apple engineer named in the suit, well after Liu had left the company. That manager reportedly used the access to move files around and later texted Liu directly for help answering technical questions about ongoing Apple projects. If true, that's not exactly the airtight information-security regime you'd expect from a company alleging industrial espionage.
Apple's July complaint claims OpenAI orchestrated a scheme to pull confidential hardware knowledge out of former employees. This week Apple asked the court to speed up discovery, saying its internal probe turned up more ex-staffers who may have seen or taken part in the alleged theft. OpenAI counters that Apple still hasn't named an actual trade secret, pointing instead to vague buckets like component manufacturing, vendor relationships, and distribution channels — the kind of broad-strokes language that's hard to defend as a specific, protectable secret in court.
The sharper accusation buried in the filing is about motive. OpenAI's lawyers argue Apple is less interested in protecting IP than in slowing down a rival that keeps poaching its engineers, framing the lawsuit as a stand-in for Apple's struggles retaining talent and building competitive AI hardware. "OpenAI is building something entirely new and different from anything at Apple," the motion states, adding that Apple "should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent."
None of this settles the case. But it does set up a fight less about stolen blueprints and more about whether Apple's internal chaos undercuts its own legal footing — a fairly unusual position for a company known for obsessive control over everything it makes.
My take
Companies love to treat trade secrets as sacred until someone points out they left the office key under the mat, and Apple's alleged iCloud sloppiness is a gift to OpenAI's lawyers. If Apple genuinely believes its hardware roadmap is being pillaged, it should worry less about suing a competitor for hiring good engineers and more about why a manager was still logged into a departed employee's personal account months later. This case looks a lot less like corporate espionage and a lot more like Apple's talent problem dressed up in legal paperwork.
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