OpenAI alleges in a federal court filing reported on Wednesday that a former employee, now back at Apple, sent over 100 files on an unreleased device to personal accounts and later briefed senior Apple leaders on the product, and Apple says it has found nothing backing the claim.
The filing does not name the employee. OpenAI says he worked at the company for about six months before returning to Apple, and that he briefed senior Apple leaders on the unreleased device. It does not say exactly when, only that the briefing came months before the filing.
The company says it fears its confidential information has spread inside Apple. They cited the HomeView smart display, which launched on Tuesday, as evidence that Apple is moving into AI products. OpenAI has not yet filed a counterclaim against Apple, but it asked the court for time to investigate and, if the evidence supports it, file one later.
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Apple denies the allegation, saying its policies prohibit new employees from drawing on confidential material from earlier employers, and that it found nothing backing the claim. Their lawyers wrote on October 12 that neither personal phone number OpenAI listed belongs to the employee’s Apple work line, so Apple may have had no control over anything sent to them during his OpenAI tenure.
Apple said its searches of his work-related repositories turned up no OpenAI files, that it had not heard of any such presentation, and that it requested details from OpenAI. Apple says OpenAI never replied and went to court instead.
The filing is part of a trade secret case Apple brought in July. Apple sued OpenAI and its hardware company, io Products, along with two former Apple employees, engineer Chang Liu and design executive Tang Tan.
OpenAI denies the claims and rebutted them publicly in August, calling the case “careless, aggressive and oddly personal.” On Tuesday, the court let Apple collect data from the devices of some former employees and question three of them under oath on an expedited schedule.
At a hearing on Wednesday, OpenAI promised to avoid using the information Apple says was taken and agreed to make forensic copies of the devices of 14 employees who may hold Apple data. Judge Edward Davila called it “highly likely” that he will grant Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction, which would formally bar OpenAI from using that information.
