OpenAI says Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit is ‘rotten to its core’
The Verge Jess Weatherbed ● Covered by 7 sources
OpenAI wants Apple's trade secrets lawsuit tossed, calling it meritless and 'rotten to its core.' Apple sued in July over ex-staffers allegedly stealing files for OpenAI's hardware plans.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Jess Weatherbed — read the original for the full story.
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OpenAI has fired back at Apple in court, filing a motion to dismiss the trade secrets lawsuit Apple brought in July. The filing doesn't pull punches, describing Apple's case as meritless and, in OpenAI's own words, rotten to its core. This isn't OpenAI's first shot either — it published a blog post earlier in the week titled "Apple is getting this wrong," calling the lawsuit careless, aggressive, and oddly personal.
Apple's original complaint claimed that former employees who left to join OpenAI took confidential documents with them, allegedly to help OpenAI's hardware development efforts. OpenAI's response leans hard on the idea that Apple is stretching ordinary employee behavior into something criminal. The company argues Apple is mischaracterizing routine actions as theft and dressing up generic product development info as if it were some closely guarded secret. OpenAI also says Apple never took reasonable steps to actually protect that information in the first place.
One name that keeps surfacing is Chang Liu, a former Apple employee now at OpenAI who's accused of downloading confidential files after he left. OpenAI's defense is that Liu was just helping out former colleagues who reached out and asked for assistance — not orchestrating some corporate heist.
The sharper accusation buried in the filing is that Apple's lawsuit is less about protecting secrets and more about covering for its own struggles. OpenAI's filing suggests Apple is using litigation to paper over its difficulties holding onto talent and its slow progress weaving AI into its products. OpenAI frames itself as simply building something different, something that happens to attract engineers who used to work at Apple.
A judge is scheduled to hear arguments on OpenAI's dismissal motion on October 1st. In the meantime, Apple isn't backing off — it filed for a preliminary injunction on Monday, asking the court to block OpenAI and the named employees from accessing, using, or sharing any of the disputed information while the case plays out.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Big companies love to reach for a lawsuit when the real problem is that people don't want to work there anymore, and this smells exactly like that. If Apple actually had ironclad proof of stolen secrets, it wouldn't need a preliminary injunction to scramble after the fact — it would just have the evidence. Talent walks toward exciting work, not away from it because of some conspiracy, and courtrooms are a lousy substitute for a competitive offer.
Read more about this at: The Verge