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Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI over alleged trade secret theft is heating up. According to a new report from The Financial Times, Apple recently sent out letters to 40 former employees instructing them not to delete any emails or other modes of personal communication that might have pertinent information regarding the ongoing lawsuit. While such demands are typical during the discovery portion of legal battles, Apple sending out letters to dozens of former employees suggests that Apple believes there is a lot more to uncover. Indeed, Apple in its initial court filing said that the evidence it had already uncovered was simply the “tip of the iceberg.”
It’s no secret that Apple over the past year has seen a mass exodus of employees who have left to work at OpenAI. Notably, many of the individuals who have left Apple for OpenAI aren’t just run-of the-mill engineers, but often some of Apple’s top talent. As it stands now, OpenAI has poached upwards of 400 Apple employees as the company remains intent on parlaying its successful AI software into a hardware device. Recently, a Bloomberg report revealed that OpenAI’s first big hardware product will be a portable smart speaker that will “serve as a humanlike AI companion that lives in the home.”
OpenAI has yet to formally file a response to Apple’s lawsuit. It did, however, release a curiously vague statement that reads as follows: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.” Many have pointed out that OpenAI’s statement is surprisingly weak given the gravity of Apple’s claims.
What Apple’s OpenAI lawsuit is about
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Apple claims that OpenAI illegally misappropriated its trade secrets. Apple specifically alleges that a former employee named Tang Tan, who now serves as OpenAI’s chief of hardware, absconded with proprietary Apple product information and instructed Apple employees interviewing at OpenAI to covertly do the same. To this point, Apple suggests that Tan “directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘actual parts’ from Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information.”
One of the more wild claims in Apple’s lawsuit is that OpenAI tricked an Apple supplier into showing them a metal-finishing technique used on Apple products. The suit alleges that OpenAI misled the supplier into believing Apple granted OpenAI permission to learn about the proprietary technique. Apple also alleges that a former Apple employee named Chang Liu kept a company-issued laptop after leaving the company. He then boasted to a former colleague that he found an authentication bug on Apple’s network and planned to use the laptop to access confidential information.
The lawsuit reads in part: “While developing hardware for OpenAI, Mr. Liu surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous, detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data.”
It will be interesting to see how OpenAI responds given that Apple seemingly has a substantial amount of damning evidence. It will also be interesting to see how the lawsuit impacts OpenAI and Apple’s ongoing relationship involving ChatGPT integration in iOS.
