{"id":129314,"date":"2026-08-04T17:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T17:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/129314\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T17:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T17:13:08","slug":"openai-is-trying-to-shame-apple-into-backing-down-from-its-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/129314\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI Is Trying to Shame Apple Into Backing Down From Its Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tech industry reeled last month when Apple sued OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets as the startup builds its nascent AI hardware business. In a blog post<\/a> published late Tuesday night, OpenAI dismissed the lawsuit as a baseless witch hunt\u2014and said it has the evidence to prove it.<\/p>\n

The post, titled \u201cApple is getting this wrong,\u201d has the tone of a pupil disappointed with a once-beloved mentor who\u2019s lost their way. \u201cApple is one of the greatest companies of all time, and built a reputation for obsessing over the smallest details,\u201d the post reads. \u201cThis careless, aggressive and oddly personal lawsuit sadly doesn\u2019t live up to that reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit accuses Chang Liu, a former Apple staff member who left the company in January to join OpenAI, of using a former colleague\u2019s company-owned laptop to download technical documents, among other infractions. OpenAI is trying to undercut that claim with a series of screenshots published in its new blog post. They\u2019re somewhat difficult to parse, since many legally sensitive details\u2014along with the names of Apple employees\u2014have been redacted. But the messages appear to show Liu walking his former colleagues through accessibility issues in Apple\u2019s internal systems. According to OpenAI, Liu did nothing wrong here, and the blame should instead fall on Apple for \u201cfailing to properly manage system access when people leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\u00a9OpenAI <\/p>\n

Apple has also accused one of its former executives, Tang Tan, who joined OpenAI as part of that company\u2019s $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive\u2019s hardware company IO last year, of helping departing Apple employees bypass the company\u2019s security protocols.<\/p>\n

Reuters reported<\/a> Tuesday that Apple had requested a preliminary injunction against Liu, Tan, and OpenAI, which, if granted, would prevent the defendants from publicly disclosing confidential information as the case proceeds. It\u2019s unclear if redacted employee messages of the sort OpenAI published in its blog post would fall into that category. In any case, OpenAI wrote in its blog post that Apple\u2019s request for a preliminary injunction \u201cis both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s new blog post also added a strange twist to the circumstances in which the legal complaint first surfaced.<\/p>\n

According to the lawsuit,\u00a0Apple first reached out to OpenAI in February to discuss concerns that company IP was being \u201cimproperly\u201d used by former employees now working for the ChatGPT maker. OpenAI didn\u2019t respond, the company reportedly<\/a> claimed in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s rebuttal paints a different picture. In another series of screenshots, a third-party attorney representing Apple named Gabriel Gross is shown emailing OpenAI general counsel Che Cheng with a request to discuss \u201cformer Apple employees at OpenAI retaining non-public, confidential, and proprietary information,\u201d as it was described in the email\u2019s subject line, according to one of the screenshots. The next day (February 24), Gross emails Cheng again, apologizing for having apparently mistaken him for another OpenAI employee with the last name of Wang, whom Gross described as \u201cone of the former Apple employees at issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\u00a9 OpenAI <\/p>\n

OpenAI was quick to call out this embarrassing slip-up in its blog post. \u201cApple had claimed that they contacted OpenAI in February and that we didn\u2019t respond. They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names\u2014only after we brought this to their attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

A short collection of heavily redacted text and email conversations published in a company blog post is not, of course, anything close to a legal finishing move. There\u2019s every reason to believe this will be a long and drawn-out battle between two of the biggest tech companies in the world, potentially with real stakes for the future of OpenAI\u2019s hardware ambitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tech industry reeled last month when Apple sued OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets as the startup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[24,319,2000,2594,157],"class_list":["post-129314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-ai","tag-apple","tag-intellectual-property","tag-law","tag-openai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129314","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=129314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}