Apple Is Suing OpenAI for Allegedly Stealing Hardware Secrets
Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the AI company systematically poached employees to steal proprietary hardware secrets. The suit claims OpenAI encouraged former Apple staff to bypass security protocols to bring confidential technology to their new roles.
Why it matters
This legal battle highlights the intensifying competition between tech giants as they race to develop proprietary hardware for AI-powered consumer devices.
The lawsuit accuses OpenAI chief hardware officer Tang Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple and oversaw iPhone product design, and his colleagues at the AI company of encouraging people departing or considering leaving Apple to bring with them proprietary and unreleased technology. Tan allegedly helped coach recruits on how to evade Apple’s data security protocols and directed them to bring confidential Apple parts to job interviews at OpenAI.
“OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple says in the lawsuit, which was filed in US district court in San Jose. The company describes OpenAI as resorting “to taking unlawful shortcuts” while under “mounting pressure to deliver its first commercial hardware product.”
OpenAI and Tan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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