OpenAI hit back hard at Apple's trade secrets lawsuit in a new court filing, calling the case "a mess of Apple's own making" and accusing the iPhone maker of trying to stop hundreds of employees from walking out the door.
The Sam Altman-led AI firm filed its response late Monday in the Northern District of California, the same federal court where Apple launched its original suit in July. OpenAI's filing did not just deny wrongdoing, it flipped Apple's narrative, arguing the tech giant's own sloppy internal procedures created the problems it now blames on others. Apple, for its part, filed a separate motion the same day seeking expedited discovery, including depositions of former employees now on OpenAI's payroll.
The dispute centers on two former Apple employees, Tang Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran who now serves as OpenAI's chief hardware officer, and Chang Liu, a former Apple engineer on OpenAI's technical team. Apple's July lawsuit alleged both men took confidential information about product designs, manufacturing processes, and supply chain strategies when they left. AP News reported that the suit named OpenAI, io Products, Tan, and Liu as defendants.
OpenAI's filing went after Apple's core allegations point by point. On the claim that departing employees walked off with proprietary material, the New York Post reported that OpenAI's response laid the blame squarely on Apple's own policies:
"Apple blames employees who left the company for taking their personal accounts with them, even though Apple encouraged them to use personal accounts for work."
In Tan's case, OpenAI stated he sent only non-confidential documents to his personal email, along with congratulatory messages from friends and colleagues and a copy of an Apple manager's checklist for exiting employees. Nothing proprietary. Nothing stolen, according to OpenAI's account.
Apple had also alleged Tan encouraged job candidates to bring "actual parts" from Apple devices to their OpenAI interviews. Breitbart reported that Apple's original complaint described the alleged theft as occurring "at every level" of OpenAI's operations. OpenAI disputed the characterization, stating that any parts candidates brought were components of old, publicly available products, a common practice in engineering interviews across the tech industry.
The filing framed the interview questions Apple objected to as routine:
"It blames employers who interview Apple employees for asking questions, even though those unremarkable questions are standard in tech and every other industry."
Liu's situation is more contested. Apple alleged that Liu only recently handed over a MacBook he had used after leaving the company. Apple claimed the laptop showed Liu downloaded confidential information and instructed an OpenAI colleague to destroy evidence. Those are serious accusations, if proven.
OpenAI told a different story. In its filing, the company stated that Apple staffers contacted Liu after he left and asked for help locating files. He complied. That framing casts Liu not as a rogue actor smuggling secrets but as a cooperative former employee responding to his old employer's requests.
Neither side's version has been adjudicated. A federal judge has not yet ruled on Apple's August request for a preliminary injunction that would halt OpenAI's hardware ambitions. Apple also filed its separate Monday motion for expedited discovery, pushing for depositions of four former Apple employees now working at OpenAI. Newsmax reported that Apple's injunction request sought to bar Liu, Tan, and OpenAI from accessing or using Apple's alleged trade secrets.
Perhaps the most striking number in OpenAI's filing: approximately 400 Apple employees have left to join the AI startup. OpenAI wielded that figure like a verdict on Apple's workplace appeal, arguing the lawsuit was really about stanching the talent drain rather than protecting genuine trade secrets.
The filing did not mince words:
"Apple cannot stop the next 400 employees from leaving by filing baseless lawsuits."
OpenAI went further, casting the exodus as a market judgment on Apple's failure to keep pace in artificial intelligence:
"Employees have choices. They 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."
That last line, "sloppy procedures", lands harder when paired with a procedural blunder Apple made before the lawsuit was even filed. The Washington Examiner reported that Apple's outside counsel accidentally emailed the wrong person at OpenAI, confusing two Asian last names and sending a message intended for a former Apple employee named Wang to OpenAI's general counsel, Che Chang. OpenAI seized on the error, releasing email transcripts to challenge Apple's account of pre-lawsuit communications. For a company that built its reputation on obsessive attention to detail, the mix-up handed OpenAI an easy line of attack.
The roots of this legal battle trace back to a partnership that soured. In 2024, Apple and OpenAI announced a deal to have ChatGPT work with Apple's Siri voice assistant. But the relationship fractured after OpenAI acquired io Products, a hardware startup founded by longtime Apple designer Jony Ive, for $6.5 billion. That purchase signaled OpenAI's move into consumer devices, territory Apple considers its own.
OpenAI's filing described its first expected hardware device as "a new type of consumer device that differs materially from known Apple products." That language is designed to undercut Apple's claim that OpenAI needed Apple's proprietary designs. If the device is genuinely different from an iPhone or iPad, the argument for trade secret theft gets harder to sustain.
Meanwhile, Apple's own AI strategy has shifted. The company announced in June that its newest version of Siri would be powered by Google's Gemini, not OpenAI's technology. The former partners are now competitors, and the courtroom is where they are settling the score.
Apple did not respond to the New York Post's request for comment on OpenAI's filing. That silence contrasts with OpenAI's strategy of fighting the case in public as aggressively as in court. The company has released email transcripts, issued public statements, and used its filing to paint Apple as a lumbering incumbent lashing out at a faster rival.
Whether that framing holds up depends on what the evidence actually shows, particularly the contents of Liu's MacBook and the specifics of what Apple claims was downloaded. The judge overseeing the case in the Northern District of California has not yet ruled on Apple's preliminary injunction request or its push for expedited discovery. Those rulings will shape whether this case moves toward trial or gets trimmed early.
Several questions remain unanswered. What exactly did Apple allege was on Liu's laptop? Who is the OpenAI colleague Apple says was told to destroy evidence? And what specific confidential information, beyond the broad categories of "product designs, manufacturing processes, and supply chain strategies," does Apple claim was taken? Until those details surface in court filings or rulings, both sides are telling the story they want the public to hear.
When four hundred employees leave one company for another, that is not a theft, it is a referendum. Apple can file all the motions it wants, but no injunction will fix a retention problem.
