'Rotten to its core': OpenAI asks judge to throw out Apple's lawsuit
OpenAI has asked a federal judge to dismiss Apple's lawsuit accusing the ChatGPT maker of stealing trade secrets, as per a Bloomberg report. Lawyers for OpenAI reportedly told the court that Apple's allegations are meritless and falsely portray the actions of the San Francisco-based startup's employees.
The ChatGPT maker said Apple filed the lawsuit without adequately investigating the facts and is instead using litigation to make up for its inability to retain AI talent.
OpenAI says Apple's lawsuit falsely portrays the actions of its employees. The company says that its chief hardware officer, Tang Tan, conducted interviews in line with industry-standard recruiting practices, while Chang Liu, the former Apple engineer accused of stealing confidential files, was in fact assisting a former Apple colleague who had asked him to help locate information required for ongoing work.
“Plainly filed without adequate investigation and built on selectively excerpted communications and ordinary conduct stripped of context, Apple’s complaint is — to borrow its own phrase — ‘rotten to its core,’” OpenAI's lawyers said in a court filing.
“Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent,” they added.
The new filing by OpenAI also takes a shot at Apple's AI efforts, claiming that the iPhone maker has struggled to integrate artificial intelligence into its products and is trying to portray routine hiring practices as corporate espionage.
It states that Apple's suit “recasts the benign, lawful conduct of former employees — who in many of the cited instances were in fact trying to help Apple, at Apple’s request, by making sure their former colleagues’ work could continue without them — as theft of so-called trade secrets.”
The latest filing by OpenAI comes shortly after Apple expanded the legal fight against the company by claiming that it had found at least 10 other former Apple employees who may have been involved in the alleged trade secrets theft, apart from Chang Liu, Tang Tan and OpenAI employee Yu-Ting "Alyssa" Peng.
The company also filed for a preliminary injunction asking the court to order OpenAI to stop using what it describes as stolen trade secrets and return any confidential Apple information while the lawsuit proceeds.
Why is Apple suing OpenAI?
Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief hardware officer, Tang Tan, last month, accusing the AI startup of orchestrating a campaign to obtain confidential Apple information by recruiting its employees.
Apple also alleged that former iPhone engineer Chang Liu downloaded confidential hardware-related files after joining OpenAI by exploiting an authentication bug that allowed him to continue accessing Apple's internal systems.
In its latest filing, OpenAI disputes that claim and notes that Liu was in fact contacted by former Apple colleagues who asked him to help locate information needed for their ongoing work. The company included excerpts of text messages that it says show Apple employees requesting Liu's assistance after he had already left the company.