Apple’s OpenAI Lawsuit Turns Into a Blame Game 

Apple’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI took a sharper turn this week, with Apple submitting what it calls new, damaging evidence against former employee Chang Liu, now working at OpenAI.

Meanwhile, OpenAI filed its own defense arguing Apple’s case rests on shaky footing.

The dispute traces back to July, after Apple accused OpenAI and former staff members Tang Tan and Chang Liu of stealing trade secrets to speed up OpenAI’s expansion into hardware.

Notably, that hardware push originally began when OpenAI spent $6.4 billion to buy io Products, the startup co-founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive. 

Apple’s New Evidence Centers on a Circuit Schematic

The latest filing followed Liu’s legal counsel handing over his old Apple work laptop for inspection earlier this month, evidence Apple says confirms its original suspicions.

Apple alleges Liu used a confidential Apple circuit schematic in his work at OpenAI, along with a tool sharing its name with an internal Apple engineering application, and claims the ChatGPT maker was “well-aware” of Liu’s continued access to Apple’s systems.

Apple also alleges that after Liu learned in June that he was under investigation, he enlisted OpenAI colleague Yu-Ting Peng to help destroy evidence. 

As cited by TechCrunch, Apple argues the laptop shows its trade secrets “are being used and evidence is being destroyed,” countering OpenAI’s claim that Apple was conducting a “fishing expedition.”

OpenAI says Liu accessed Apple files only after leaving to help former colleagues and blames poor Apple system-access management rather than deliberate theft. 

Apple counters that Liu exploited an unpatched authentication bug, a pattern it claims goes beyond Liu alone, citing 11 other former employees who allegedly shared trade secrets after joining OpenAI. 

OpenAI Fires Back, Blaming Apple’s Own Policies

According to Reuters, OpenAI’s response, filed late Monday in a U.S. District Court in San Jose, denied the allegations and turned the blame on Apple.

“This dispute is a mess of Apple’s own making, and it is trying to blame everyone else,” OpenAI wrote, pointing to Apple’s workplace practices.

The company cited Apple’s practice of encouraging employees to use personal iCloud accounts for work documents, making it harder to separate personal files from company property. 

OpenAI also criticized Apple’s policy of escorting departing employees out before properly revoking system access.

The IPO-bound AI lab argued the lawsuit is less about protecting trade secrets and more about discouraging Apple employees from leaving as the AI competition mounts. 

It said employees “can leave a company like Apple that has struggled to adopt AI” and join a competitor, adding that Apple “cannot use its own sloppy procedures to blame others for its own mess.”

A Fight That’s Really About Who Owns AI Hardware’s Future

What makes this dispute worth watching is what each side is trying to protect.

Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI from building hardware based on Apple’s technology reveals its main concern: that its engineering expertise, refined through decades of iPhone development, is now helping build OpenAI’s first consumer device.

OpenAI’s defense, by contrast, leans on a genuinely uncomfortable truth for Apple; roughly 400 former Apple employees now work there, a number too large to explain away as isolated misconduct rather than a broader talent exodus. 

Both arguments can be true: individual employees may have crossed legal lines, while Apple’s broader concern is watching its former employees build the hardware company it once partnered with, when Siri still used OpenAI’s models instead of Google’s Gemini.

Source: OpenAI says Apple has only itself to blame in trade-secret fight