OpenAI’s response to Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit escalated this week, when the company published emails, iMessage exchanges and screenshots it says contradict Apple’s account of the case. The post, titled “Apple is getting this wrong,” pairs praise for Apple as “one of the greatest companies of all time” with a description of its lawsuit as “careless, aggressive and oddly personal.”
It’s OpenAI’s most detailed public response since Apple filed its suit nearly a month ago. The shift, from clipped one-line denials to a document-backed post, marks a level of public combat that corporate legal disputes rarely see.
Apple sued OpenAI on the 10th July in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging former employees stole trade secrets to benefit OpenAI’s hardware ambitions. OpenAI’s new post isn’t a court filing. It’s the company’s own account of the dispute, built around recreated text exchanges and email correspondence it says contradict Apple’s version of events. None of Apple’s allegations, or OpenAI’s rebuttals, have been tested in court, and that matters for everything that follows.
OpenAI Apple lawsuit response: the claims at issue
Apple’s complaint, Apple Inc. v. Liu, centres on former engineer Chang Liu and former design executive Tan, alleging the two ran a scheme to funnel confidential product information to OpenAI’s hardware business. Apple’s filing states the theory bluntly: “This case is about Apple’s former employees stealing Apple’s trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI.”
This case is about Apple’s former employees stealing Apple’s trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAi
The complaint also states that more than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI. That figure comes from Apple’s own filing, and it’s context rather than a standalone allegation of misconduct: hiring former Apple staff isn’t itself unlawful. What matters legally is whether any of those employees took or used protected information, a question the headcount alone can’t answer.
Apple is seeking a preliminary injunction against Liu, Tan and OpenAI itself, arguing in its filing that Apple “will be irreparably harmed” without one. Courts weighing that kind of emergency request typically look at two things: how likely the plaintiff is to win once the case is fully heard, and whether the harm is urgent enough that waiting for trial would do lasting damage. That standard probably explains why OpenAI’s rebuttal spends so much energy contesting Apple’s account of pre-suit contact rather than simply denying that any theft occurred. Undercutting the urgency argument, even without disproving the underlying claim, could matter at this stage of the case.
From brief denial to a document-backed post
OpenAI’s first response, issued the same day Apple filed, ran a scant two sentences: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.” Four days later, on July 14, OpenAI added that it had seen no evidence supporting Apple’s claims.
We do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets
This post is a different register entirely. OpenAI argues Apple’s injunction request is “both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets.” The company added that it’s “much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier.”
The post closes with a pointed complaint of its own. OpenAI says it took Apple’s allegations seriously and offered to help resolve the dispute, but that Apple has instead shifted its narrative, “including by making vague accusations about other former employees,” a tactic OpenAI expects will continue.
Allegation by allegation: what Apple says, OpenAI counters
OpenAI says Apple’s complaint mischaracterises what happened when Apple’s outside counsel reached out in February. According to OpenAI, the lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two similar Asian surnames, correcting the record only after OpenAI flagged the mistake, and OpenAI says Apple has since acknowledged the error. OpenAI also disputes that a conversation with its general counsel ever took place, saying Apple has since conceded it did not, and maintains Apple never raised the specific allegations that later appeared in the lawsuit, instead telling OpenAI it was “resolving any issues” before five months passed with no further word until suit was filed.
None of that speaks to whether trade secrets moved. It’s aimed at Apple’s account of its own diligence before litigation, which is the ground OpenAI is contesting as part of the injunction fight.
Liu’s post-departure access
Apple alleges Liu accessed confidential information after leaving the company. OpenAI counters that Apple’s own employees contacted Liu after his departure to ask for his help locating information, and frames his continued access as “residual access” caused by Apple’s own failure to properly manage or revoke system permissions when employees leave.
The two accounts aren’t necessarily in conflict about what happened, just about what it means
The two accounts aren’t necessarily in conflict about what happened, just about what it means. Apple’s allegation concerns what Liu did with access after leaving; OpenAI’s account concerns why that access still existed and who asked him to use it. Sorting out that distinction, not disputing the underlying facts, is the harder legal question.
Tan and the hardware claims
Apple’s suit alleges Tan, a former Apple design executive, helped funnel confidential product data to OpenAI’s hardware effort. OpenAI describes Tan as someone who spent more than 24 years at Apple before co-founding io Products with Jony Ive, the hardware company that merged with OpenAI in July 2025, and says in its post that “Tang has always been clear with the team that we do not want, and must not use, any confidential information from other companies.”
That statement speaks to OpenAI’s asserted internal policy and the instructions Tan reportedly gave colleagues. It doesn’t address what Apple says actually happened with the information itself, a question that would presumably need discovery to resolve, not duelling blog posts.
Hiring versus misuse
Cross-company hiring in AI has gotten expensive fast: Meta reportedly offered signing bonuses of up to $100 million last year to pull in talent. Against that backdrop, more than 400 former Apple employees ending up at OpenAI isn’t surprising on its own.
Employees who move to a competitor typically remain bound by non-disclosure agreements from their previous employer. Whether those agreements were violated, not the fact of hiring itself, is the question at the centre of Apple’s suit. Showing someone changed jobs is easy; showing that a person took, used or disclosed protected information is a much harder task, which is exactly why both sides are now fighting over emails and message logs instead of headcounts.
What happens next
OpenAI’s shift from brief denials to a document-backed public post looks designed to contest Apple’s account of urgency and diligence before a judge weighs in, not to settle whether confidential information changed hands. Apple’s core claims, the alleged scheme involving Liu and Tan and its assertion of irreparable harm, still await testing in court.
OpenAI's response to Apple's trade secrets lawsuit escalated this week, when the company published emails, iMessage exchanges and screenshots it says contradict Apple's account of the case. The post, titled "Apple is getting this wrong," pairs praise for Apple as "one of the greatest companies of all time" with a description of its lawsuit as "careless, aggressive and oddly personal."
It's OpenAI's most detailed public response since Apple filed its suit nearly a month ago. The shift, from clipped one-line denials to a document-backed post, marks a level of public combat that corporate legal disputes rarely see.
Apple sued OpenAI on the 10th July in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging former employees stole trade secrets to benefit OpenAI's hardware ambitions. OpenAI's new post isn't a court filing. It's the company's own account of the dispute, built around recreated text exchanges and email correspondence it says contradict Apple's version of events. None of Apple's allegations, or OpenAI's rebuttals, have been tested in court, and that matters for everything that follows.
