OpenAI Asks a Judge to Throw Out Apple's Trade-Secret Suit

OpenAI asked a federal judge on 6 August to dismiss Apple's lawsuit accusing it of stealing trade secrets, calling the complaint too vague to survive. The filing is the first real counterpunch in a fight between two of the most valuable companies in technology.

Apple sued in July, alleging that OpenAI ran a scheme to obtain confidential hardware information through former Apple engineers, and that its recruiters pressed job candidates for secrets during interviews. According to Bloomberg, Apple followed up this week with a request for a preliminary injunction that would bar OpenAI from using any of the material while the case proceeds.

OpenAI's argument

OpenAI's lawyers say Apple has not done the basic work of naming what it wants protected. The complaint, they argue, "fails to sufficiently describe the information for which it claims trade secret protection," and its broad product-development categories "are not sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss."

The company also disputes Apple's account of events. As Axios reports, OpenAI says its senior hardware executive interviewed Apple staff in line with ordinary industry recruiting practice, and that the employee accused of taking secrets was in fact trying to help a former colleague still at Apple. In its own telling, OpenAI frames the suit as filed without adequate investigation.

Why it matters

The timing is not incidental. OpenAI has been building toward consumer hardware of its own, and Apple has spent years guarding the internal work that goes into its devices. A trade-secret fight between them is really a fight over who gets to hire whom, and how much of what a departing engineer carries in their head counts as property.

None of it will resolve quickly. A hearing on Apple's preliminary injunction is set for 1 October, and the motion to dismiss is only an opening move in a case that could run for years. For now, both companies are arguing about the shape of the dispute rather than its substance: Apple says it was robbed, OpenAI says Apple has not even managed to say what was taken.