OpenAI says Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit is ‘rotten to its core’

OpenAI filed a motion this week asking a federal judge to throw out Apple's trade secrets lawsuit before it goes any further. The filing doesn't mince words: OpenAI calls the case "rotten to its core" and says Apple's entire theory rests on treating everyday employee moves and routine product knowledge as if they were classified documents.

Apple sued OpenAI in July, arguing that several former Apple employees who later joined OpenAI carried confidential information with them and used it to help build ChatGPT and related products. It's the kind of dispute Silicon Valley has seen before, engineers hop companies, employers get nervous, lawyers get involved. But OpenAI's response argues Apple is stretching the definition of a trade secret to cover things that were never locked down in the first place.

Specifically, OpenAI says the information Apple is pointing to was general product development knowledge, not the kind of tightly guarded formula or blueprint that trade secret law is meant to protect. And the company argues Apple never took the basic steps courts expect when a business wants legal protection for sensitive material, things like restricting access or requiring specific confidentiality agreements tied to that information. Without that groundwork, OpenAI's lawyers say, Apple can't now claim in court that the material was secret at all.

The move puts the dispute in the hands of a judge who will have to decide whether Apple's complaint clears the bar to proceed, or whether it gets dismissed at this early stage. Either way, the case is turning into a test of how far big tech companies can stretch trade secret claims when talent moves between rival AI labs, a question that's only going to come up more as the AI hiring wars keep heating up.