OpenAI has fired back at Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit with a motion to dismiss that does not merely deny the allegations — it turns Apple’s own security practices into the central defense. Filed Wednesday in federal court, the motion argues that Apple’s information-management failures, not any coordinated theft by OpenAI, are responsible for the access issues at the heart of the case.
The legal strategy represents an aggressive gambit to get the case thrown out before it reaches discovery. Rather than litigating whether former Apple employees at OpenAI actually accessed confidential information, OpenAI is challenging whether that information legally qualifies as protected “trade secrets” in the first place — given how poorly Apple secured it.
What Happened
Apple filed its initial complaint in July, accusing OpenAI of orchestrating a scheme to obtain confidential hardware information through former Apple engineers and recruiting interviews. The suit named OpenAI, chief hardware officer Tang Tan (a 24-year Apple veteran who led iPhone and Apple Watch product design), and former senior systems engineer Chang Liu, who joined OpenAI in January. Apple alleged that Liu accessed confidential hardware files after discovering an authentication bug, and that Tan used knowledge of Apple’s offboarding procedures to recruit other employees.
Apple also escalated this week, asking the court for a preliminary injunction to bar OpenAI from using the alleged trade secrets while the case proceeds. A hearing on that injunction is scheduled for October 1.
OpenAI’s Defense: It’s Apple’s Security, Not Theft
OpenAI’s motion advances three interconnected arguments. First, it contends Apple cannot claim trade secret protection for information it failed to secure properly. The filing cites Apple’s practice of allowing employees to use personal iCloud accounts for work, which intermingled corporate and personal data and left former employees with lingering access they neither requested nor wanted.
Second, OpenAI submitted text message records showing that after Liu left Apple, an Apple manager remained logged into his personal iCloud account to transfer files and later asked him for technical help with Apple projects. OpenAI portrays this as Apple’s own offboarding failure — not evidence of theft. In one exchange, Apple colleagues asked Liu to help locate files and keep his iCloud account signed in while transfers completed.
Third, OpenAI argues Apple’s complaint fails to identify specific trade secrets, instead listing “generic categories of the product-development process — such as component manufacturing, product testing, vendor and supplier relationships, and distribution channels”. Without specificity, OpenAI contends, the lawsuit cannot meet the legal standard for trade secret misappropriation.
Apple’s Counterargument
Apple has pushed back against OpenAI’s iCloud theory. In a filing, the company said the confidential files allegedly accessed by Liu did not come from iCloud at all, but from a different cloud storage provider. Apple also stated it does not sue former employees who accidentally retain internal files in their personal iCloud accounts. The company maintains that OpenAI’s argument is a distraction from the core allegation: that departing employees deliberately took proprietary information to benefit a competitor.
Talent Wars and Hardware Ambitions
Beneath the legal pleadings lies a broader strategic conflict. Apple alleges that more than 400 of its former employees now work at OpenAI. The AI company’s hardware ambitions accelerated with its July 2025 acquisition of io Products, the startup co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive. OpenAI is widely believed to be developing a pocketable AI device that could compete directly with the iPhone.
The lawsuit follows a cooling of the two companies’ relationship. Apple and OpenAI had spent roughly two years partnering on ChatGPT integration into Siri and Apple Intelligence. But as OpenAI moved into hardware, tensions grew.
OpenAI’s motion leans heavily into this dynamic, accusing Apple of using the lawsuit to compensate for its own struggles. “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 reads. Variations of the word “fail” appear nearly 50 times in the 31-page filing.
What This Case Really Means
This is where the legal fight exposes something more significant than who accessed what files. OpenAI’s defense effectively argues that Apple’s legendary culture of secrecy may have been undermined by its own everyday practices — specifically, the convenience of letting employees use personal accounts for work. If Apple cannot demonstrate that it treated its alleged trade secrets as secrets, the case collapses.
But there is a sharper point here. The lawsuit is not really about whether Chang Liu kept an iCloud account open. It is about whether one company can use trade secret law to slow a competitor’s entry into its core market. OpenAI’s motion frames the case as a “pretextual lawsuit” designed to make up for Apple’s lag in AI. That framing may resonate with courts skeptical of using IP law as a competitive weapon.
However, OpenAI is also taking a calculated risk. By arguing that Apple’s security was so lax that nothing could reasonably be considered a trade secret, OpenAI implicitly acknowledges that its employees did have access to Apple’s confidential information. The defense is not “we didn’t take anything” — it is “you left the door open, so it doesn’t count.” That is a high-stakes legal argument that could backfire if the court finds that Apple’s practices, however imperfect, do not defeat trade secret protection.
What Happens Next
The next major milestone is the October 1 preliminary injunction hearing, where Apple will argue it faces irreparable harm without immediate relief. OpenAI has until August 17 to file its formal response to Apple’s injunction request.
If the case survives dismissal, discovery could expose sensitive details about both companies’ hiring practices, hardware roadmaps, and data-security procedures. That prospect alone may create pressure to settle — though neither side appears inclined to back down.
For now, OpenAI has succeeded in shifting the narrative from theft to incompetence. Whether that argument holds up in court is another question entirely. But one thing is clear: this is no longer just a lawsuit about trade secrets. It is a public airing of how two of tech’s most powerful companies handle their most sensitive assets — and what happens when the lines between partnership and competition blur.
