OpenAI has fought back against Apple's trade secret theft allegations, saying Apple is trying to "blame everyone else" for its own mess.
In a Monday filing with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, OpenAI said Apple has failed to allege a single protectable trade secret.
"This dispute is a mess of Apple’s own making, and it is trying to blame everyone else," OpenAI wrote in the filing.
In July, Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and former Apple employees Chang Liu and Tang Tan, accusing them of trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract.
"This case is about Apple's former employees stealing Apple's trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI. Apple brings this suit to put a stop to it," the iPhone maker wrote in the July filing.
Apple said that OpenAI has hired over 400 former Apple employees. "[It] is not surprising that certain OpenAI personnel have knowledge of Apple's confidential and proprietary information, which they are obligated to keep confidential," the firm said.
Before joining OpenAI, Liu previously spent eight years at Apple as a senior system electrical engineer, according to the filing. Tan spent 24 years at Apple, most recently as vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, and now serves as OpenAI's chief hardware officer.
Apple's 'own mess'
In the Monday filing, OpenAI argued that Apple encouraged staff to use personal iCloud accounts for work but now blamed them for it.
"This makes it very hard for departing and former employees to disentangle Apple information from their personal accounts," said OpenAI.
The AI firm suggested that employees can leave a company like Apple that "has struggled to adopt AI and move to an exciting startup that builds innovative products."
"Apple may not like those choices. But it cannot claim those choices are unlawful, and it cannot use its own sloppy procedures to blame others for its own mess," OpenAI added. "Apple now tries to bully the employees who left."
OpenAI further argued that it has sought to develop hardware devices since releasing ChatGPT in 2022, and its first expected hardware product is a "new type of consumer device that differs materially from known Apple products."
OpenAI also said it has told suppliers that personnel working on Apple matters should not also work on OpenAI matters.