Apple Lawsuit Accuses OpenAI of Stealing Trade Secrets Through Former Employees

The accusations in this Apple lawsuit against OpenAI are just astonishing. Because what do you mean OpenAI was instructing Apple employees to sneak out actual parts of products to show off in job interviews? What do you mean someone was sending LOL messages to colleagues about breaking into confidential Apple documents after they quit Apple? And what do you mean OpenAI was sharing details on how to evade Apple security after they quit Apple? So much of the corporate theft sounds so brazen and out in the open. How could folks do all this and not think Apple would

sue? Maybe they should have asked Chat GPT first. OpenAI responded to Apple's lawsuit with the statement, "We have no interest in other companies trade secrets." and its CEO Sam Alman said on X, "I am not afraid of Apple, but I have tremendous respect for them." Just clearly not enough respect to use proper capitalization in a sentence, but I kid because this is Sam Alman, a guy who respects Apple so much he wore this very respectable outfit at WWDC in 2008. The double popped polo collar talking about his lemon of an app called Looped. But maybe now he should be afraid of Apple because

Apple is not shy about taking enemies to court. Apple loves a good courtroom battle to slow down the rivals. So, let's go over the most wild revelations from the lawsuit and what comes next. Apple's lawsuit points the finger at OpenAI for stealing Apple secrets by using current and former Apple employees. Some of the wildest stuff is centered around a former iPhone engineer named Chang Leu. The suit said he worked at Apple for eight years and left for Open AI. And when he left, he also took his company MacBook with him and never returned it. He also kept

access to confidential internal files. Some bug he exploited gave him backdoor access where he was able to download presentations and details around hardware manufacturing and testing. And when he was at OpenAI, he kept in touch with an Apple employee friend and he would chat with her and say, "Lol, how funny it was to still access all these files." And for months, Apple says he continued to get confidential information from that friend at Apple. He would tell her how to copy files without getting in trouble with security. But to avoid getting caught,

they both agreed it was better to move their convo to the app Line Messenger. And that friend, well, she also ended up getting a job with OpenAI this year. Another character in this lawsuit is Tang Tan. He is the chief hardware officer at OpenAI, and he is personally named in the suit. He [snorts] has been working with former Apple design head Johnny IV and CEO Altman on some big new AI hardware project. He spent 24 years keeping secrets at Apple, and now he's teaching people how to take those secrets. According to Apple, the filing says Tan would

email himself info about Apple's suppliers before he left the company. Apple alleges Tan would tell candidates to bring quote actual parts from Apple to their job interviews for showand tell sessions. Apple says in February it reached out to OpenAI to voice these concerns and see if OpenAI would also investigate and correct the situation. Apple is just the latest company to sue Open AI and CEO Altman, well, he's tied to numerous stories of dishonest and deceptive business practices. And even CNET's parent company, Ze Davis, is suing Open AI, alleging it infringed Ze Davis copyrights

in training and operating its AI systems. But Apple's lawsuit has a different twist. You see, it could reveal what secret products OpenAI is making right now. It's also shaping the future of how you use your iPhone. Remember in 2024 when Apple announced its partnership with OpenAI? That meant you could ask chat GPT questions from your devices. Well, fast forward to this recent WWDC and no one at Apple was talking about Chat GPT. Instead, we were talking about Google's Gemini. Now, the lawsuit says more than 400 Apple employees now work at OpenAI. So yeah, the

tensions are high between Siri and Chat GPT right now. But let's look at the big picture. Apple is about to get a new CEO. Tim Cook is stepping away from the CEO job in September, but you know, on his way out, he's just firing shots so he can battle enemies in court and slow down this rival from launching anything to threaten the iPhone. This may all sound familiar because Steve Jobs, Apple's past CEO, once vowed to destroy Android, calling it a stolen product. Jobs said in Walter Isacson's biography, quote, "I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

Apple filed its first major patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung, alleging it copied the iPhone design, and Apple ultimately won its design and utility patent lawsuit. But the legal battle lasted seven years and in 2018 the two tech giants reached a settlement. So how about now? What does Apple want in this battle today? Well, it wants to destroy materials and redesign products that are using Apple tech. It wants a jury trial with financial damages. And it seeks to stop more Apple trade secrets from getting out. And what do we get? Well,

if there's a trial, it will uncover things like internal emails to know what top executives knew. We may possibly know what hardware Johnny IVive has been working on and if he used any of Apple secrets to build it. It might be some time before new details emerge, but until then, there's plenty of Siri AI to play with on the public beta of iOS 27 out now. So, I'll keep you posted until next week when there's one more thing to talk about in the world of