{"id":129017,"date":"2026-08-04T12:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T12:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/129017\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T12:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T12:06:11","slug":"openai-drags-apples-lawsuit-into-the-court-of-public-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/129017\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI drags Apple\u2019s lawsuit into the court of public opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple\u2019s legal battle against OpenAI just got messier now that the ChatGPT-maker has publicly aired receipts to counter Apple\u2019s version of events. In a blog post published overnight titled \u201cApple is getting this wrong<\/a>,\u201d OpenAI said that Apple\u2019s lawsuit accusing it of stealing trade secrets is \u201ccareless, aggressive, and oddly personal,\u201d sharing iMessage and email exchanges to challenge allegations central to the case.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a legal response from OpenAI, but it\u2019s an attempt to sway the court of public opinion by poking contradictions into Apple\u2019s case using cherry-picked communications.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit filed by Apple last month<\/a> primarily revolves around former Apple employees Chang Liu and Tang Tan<\/a>, who have since joined OpenAI. Liu was a former iPhone engineer who now works on OpenAI\u2019s technical team, and Tan was employed by Apple for 25 years, formerly overseeing the iPhone and Apple Watch design before taking on the role of OpenAI\u2019s chief hardware officer. Apple alleges they took \u201csecret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products\u201d with them to advance OpenAI\u2019s hardware plans. Reuters<\/a> reports that Apple asked for a preliminary injunction on Monday to prevent Liu, Tan, \u200band OpenAI from accessing, acquiring, using or disclosing alleged confidential information while the lawsuit moves ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cApple\u2019s request for a preliminary injunction is both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets,\u201d OpenAI said in its blog post. \u201cWe\u2019re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s lawsuit alleges that Liu failed to return a company-owned computer and used an authentication vulnerability to access Apple\u2019s cloud-based network storage weeks after he left the company. Liu is also accused of downloading confidential files from Apple\u2019s storage system, and instructing another Apple colleague on how to do so and \u201cavoid trouble\u201d with the company\u2019s security team ahead of her joining OpenAI.<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s clapback paints this in a different light:<\/p>\n

\u201cApple accuses Chang Liu of accessing Apple confidential information after leaving the company, but only now admits that Apple employees reached out to him and asked for his help to locate this information. Apple now tries to shift the blame to \u201cresidual access\u201d, but they also don\u2019t disclose that this is a common issue with Apple which is caused by them failing to properly manage system access when people leave. What that means in practice is that former employees who are trying to do the right thing when they leave still have access to Apple files\u2014despite not wanting them or even being aware of them.\u201c<\/p>\n

In its lawsuit, Apple also alleges that Tan asked for confidential Apple information when interviewing Apple employees for OpenAI jobs, and instructed interviewees to showcase some of the Apple components they worked on. In response, OpenAI says that Tan \u201chas always been clear with the team that we do not want, and must not use, any confidential information from other companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its blog post, OpenAI also refuted allegations that it didn\u2019t respond to Apple\u2019s initial inquiries, saying that Apple \u201cnow admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names<\/a>,\u201d and has conceded that it didn\u2019t have a discussion with OpenAI\u2019s General Counsel. The ChatGPT-maker published emails of interactions between the two companies\u2019 legal counsel, alongside iMessages Liu exchanged with an Apple employee. You can read them in full on OpenAI\u2019s blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple\u2019s legal battle against OpenAI just got messier now that the ChatGPT-maker has publicly aired receipts to counter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[24,319,2594,157,2819,781],"class_list":["post-129017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-ai","tag-apple","tag-law","tag-openai","tag-policy","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}