OpenAI moves to dismiss Apple’s trade-secrets suit over hardware hires

A federal judge should dismiss Apple’s trade-secrets lawsuit, OpenAI said Wednesday. The company says the case is a cover-up for its inability to retain engineers and ship AI.

The 31-page filing uses variations of the word “fail” about 50 times and frames the dispute as Apple lashing out over its problems.

OpenAI’s motion leans on the word “fail”

“Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent and retaining its employees, and its failures to integrate AI into its products,” the motion says.

The central claim in the lawsuit filed by OpenAI is that Apple created the mess. Apple told staff to use their personal iCloud accounts to route work, blurring the line between corporate and personal data and leaving departing employees with access they never asked for, says OpenAI.

There are two former employees mentioned in the case. Chang Liu’s last day at Apple was January 22, 2026. Tang Tan is a design executive who OpenAI says spent more than 24 years at the company.

On August 3, OpenAI published a blog titled “Apple is getting this wrong,” in which the AI company alleged that it had iMessages between Liu and his former Apple colleagues asking Liu to help them locate files and complete transfers after he had already left.

One message from an Apple employee reads, “I found a 64GB drive. Do you think that will work,” followed later by “Still copying.”

Liu was contacted by Apple staff, not the other way around, says OpenAI. “Residual access” is how the company describes Liu’s ongoing access to Apple systems. Apple doesn’t always disable accounts when people leave.

On Tan, OpenAI says it told its team bluntly that it won’t touch proprietary material from other companies.

OpenAI disputes Apple’s pre-suit timeline

In addition, OpenAI’s blog post refutes Apple’s version of the events leading up to the lawsuit.

Apple said it reached out to OpenAI in February and got no response. OpenAI says Apple now admits its outside lawyers sent an email to the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names and only admitted the mistake after OpenAI called them out.

Apple also said it had a discussion with general counsel for OpenAI. The company later acknowledged to OpenAI that it never happened. In earlier contact, Apple never raised the specific allegations in the suit, OpenAI said, and at one point said it was “resolving any issues” and then went quiet for five months before filing, the tech giant said.

On Monday, Apple filed for a preliminary injunction, a court order that would prevent OpenAI from using the disputed trade secrets while the case is ongoing. OpenAI describes the request as baseless and pointless. It says it has no interest in Apple’s secrets and does not possess any.

Apple’s lawsuit alleges that more than 400 former employees now work at OpenAI and that the company used internal Apple code names to lure confidential details from job candidates.

Apple has reportedly lost researchers from its Foundation Models team to Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Cohere, including team lead Ruoming Pang, who left for a Meta package above $200 million.

In July, Elon Musk publicly championed Apple and exchanged insults with Sam Altman on X.