{"id":676271,"date":"2026-09-07T03:55:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T03:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/676271\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T03:55:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T03:55:42","slug":"openai-says-apple-has-only-itself-to-blame-in-trade-secret-fight-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/676271\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI says Apple has only itself to blame in trade-secret fight \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenAI<\/a> denied Apple\u2019s<\/a> allegations of trade secret theft on \u200cMonday, saying the iPhone maker failed to show any confidential information was stolen by former employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis dispute is a mess of Apple\u2019s \u200cown making, and it is trying to blame everyone else,\u201d OpenAI said in a filing late Monday in the US district court in \u200bSan Jose, California.<\/p>\n

Apple sued OpenAI and former Apple employees Tang Tan and Chang Liu in July, accusing them of misappropriating trade secrets related to hardware design, manufacturing and supply-chain operations as the ChatGPT<\/a> maker pushes into consumer devices.<\/p>\n

The artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) lab, led by chief executive Sam \u200bAltman<\/a>, contends Apple is using the lawsuit to slow a potential competitor and discourage employee departures. OpenAI has hired roughly 400 employees \u2060from Apple for its hardware initiative, the two companies have written in court filings.<\/p>\n

California law allows employees \u200cto \u200cfreely \u200bmove between rivals, OpenAI said.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit represented a dramatic escalation of tensions between the two companies, which just two years ago forged a partnership intended to boost ChatGPT\u2019s \u2060reach and help Apple gain a firmer \u200bfooting in AI. But the relationship quickly soured as competition \u200bin the AI industry intensified.<\/p>\n

In its original lawsuit, Apple argued that OpenAI\u2019s hiring of Apple employees was \u200cpart of the AI lab\u2019s strategy to \u200blearn a competitor\u2019s secrets. Apple said Tan and Liu both accessed internal Apple files after they left the \u2060company.<\/p>\n

OpenAI said on Monday that Apple encourages \u2060its employees to use \u200bpersonal iCloud accounts to access Apple work documents and perform their work functions, making it difficult for departing employees to separate personal and company information.<\/p>\n

OpenAI said Apple\u2019s policy of immediately escorting departing employees from its premises does not give them enough time to return company devices, transfer internal files back to the company or hand over responsibilities.<\/p>\n

In the filing, Liu said any access to Apple documents after his departure was done to help former Apple colleagues locate files or answer questions \u200crelated to Apple work. He \u2060said Apple employees repeatedly contacted him for assistance after he left.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0AI companies are starting to sound desperate, and that\u2019s not a good lookOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple, said he returned Apple prototypes before departing and only retained non-confidential materials, including an \u200cemployee departure checklist that was not confidential.<\/p>\n

Employees \u201ccan leave a company like Apple that has struggled to adopt AI and move to an \u200bexciting startup that builds innovative products\u201d, OpenAI wrote. \u201cApple may not like those choices. \u200bBut it cannot claim those choices are unlawful, and it cannot use its own sloppy procedures to blame others for its own mess.\u201d \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI denied Apple\u2019s allegations of trade secret theft on \u200cMonday, saying the iPhone maker failed to show any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,311,289,290,297,18,19,17,307,308,82],"class_list":["post-676271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-apple","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117227744517607905","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}