/ The real story isn't what you think.
Liam Ortiz is a tech journalist who covers AI related big tech and breaking news at TheTweaks. Before joining TheTweaks he worked for almost four years in corporate and national tech news in different companies. Few are quick but Liam is quicker, he breaks news before anyone else and that makes her special. His passion is somewhere connected with profession as his hobby is watching documentary movies.
The story started out in July with Apple suing OpenAI for alleged theft of trade secrets, the latest news in the Apple OpenAI lawsuit shows that it might not have been the employee that left the door open.
Apple filed for a preliminary injunction and expedited discovery on August 3rd and asked the federal court to temporarily restrain OpenAI and its former employees Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan from any usage of company information while the case moves forward. Hours later, OpenAI responded to the allegations in a blog post, claiming “Apple is getting this wrong”.(OpenAI)
Apple’s complaint filed in the Northern District of California claims that a coordinated scheme took place, during which former Apple employees including a 24 year Apple veteran allegedly took with them confidential hardware designs, manufacturing processes and supply chain information into OpenAI’s efforts in creating hardware for consumers. Apple requests a court order to prohibit defendants from using any of the material, depositions and return of property.
That was the news in Apple OpenAI lawsuit that everyone was already aware of. However, the recent developments change the entire narrative.
Most media outlets have been treating this Apple OpenAI lawsuit case as a “he said, she said” situation. What makes this story much more interesting, however, can be seen in OpenAI’s own response and it is the way how Apple handles its exit processes.
The company has revealed iMessages exchanged between current Apple employees and Chang Liu after his last work day asking for help in locating files, understanding his unfinished projects and even transferring files off his personal iCloud account. If true, that completely undermines the entire argument that Apple put into its case in stating that Chang Liu accessed the information after leaving the company without authorization. According to the texts, the communication was initiated by Apple’s own people.
OpenAI also noted that Apple had residual access, during which departing employees retain access to systems even after their last workday because Apple failed to properly manage offboarding. If true, it is not the security breach engineered by an AI company, but rather an internal problem that was neglected for years and has only become a legal problem now.
Apple’s lawsuit also relied on the fact that it tried contacting OpenAI in February and got no reply. According to OpenAI, the matter was actually quite messy. The emails that were sent by Apple’s outside counsel, who was trying to talk about the case with OpenAI’s General Counsel, Che Chang, said that he talked directly to Chang instead, he actually talked to Wang, who is another former employee involved in the case. The confusion, according to Apple’s lawyer, resulted from mixing two last names.
In addition, Apple’s lawyers claimed that the matter was being resolved and OpenAI did not hear anything else for five months until it saw the lawsuit itself. Five month silence from Apple is going to be a question that the company will need to answer in court and it discredits that they wouldn’t respond to framing that was included in early reporting on Apple OpenAI lawsuit.
According to OpenAI’s response, the former Apple executive named Tang Tan explicitly asked the teams not to use confidential information belonging to other companies. While we can’t know for sure from the outside, OpenAI will likely claim that the intent, not the mere access, is what matters for the court in this case.
At the moment, none of this has been proven in front of the court. Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction is still pending and the verdict on it which is expected to come in the following weeks – will be the first actual test of the evidence presented in the case. In case of the expedited discovery, Apple and OpenAI will have to present their internal communications, which will definitely make today’s leaks seem tame by comparison.
What many people miss here and it is the main point of our verdict is that even if all of the claims in Apple’s lawsuit prove to be true, the leaked messages already discredit Apple’s narrative completely. The lawsuit based on what our former employees stole from us becomes much more difficult to justify when the chain of evidence begins with current employees asking the ex-employee for help.
That does not mean OpenAI wins the lawsuit though the court does not consider PR posts and Apple’s claims regarding specific technical documents have not been disproved. However, the Apple OpenAI lawsuit case is slowly transforming into a case study on something much larger than just one company’s hardware ambitions, that is how a company’s internal access control fails to keep up with legal ambitions.
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