OpenAI has filed a motion asking a federal judge to dismiss Apple’s lawsuit accusing the AI company and two former Apple employees of stealing trade secrets.
Apple’s complaint also alleged that OpenAI solicited confidential information from job candidates during the hiring process, claims OpenAI has forcefully rejected.
The motion represents an early legal skirmish in a battle that could stretch for years and expose sensitive details about both companies’ internal operations.
If the case survives dismissal, discovery proceedings could reveal confidential information about each company’s hiring practices, hardware development strategies, and data-security protocols.
OpenAI’s 31-page filing takes a combative tone toward Apple, portraying the lawsuit as an attempt by the iPhone maker to compensate for its own competitive shortcomings in artificial intelligence.
The motion states directly: “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.”
Variations of the word “fail” appear nearly 50 times throughout the filing, signaling how aggressively OpenAI intends to contest Apple’s characterization of events.
OpenAI also turned the argument around on Apple, claiming the company reviewed personal iMessages left on corporate devices and created internal confusion by encouraging employees to use personal iCloud accounts for work purposes.
The filing argues: “Apple cannot transform the foreseeable consequences of its own systems and policies into evidence of theft by former employees who were … not aware of their latent access.”
Apple moved on Monday to request a preliminary injunction that would bar OpenAI from using the alleged trade secrets while litigation continues.
OpenAI responded to that request through a blog post titled “Apple is getting this wrong,” asserting that it never sought Apple’s trade secrets and accusing Apple of presenting a misleading timeline of events.
The lawsuit puts two of the technology industry’s most prominent companies on a collision course at a critical moment, as both race to establish dominant positions in the AI market.
The outcome could carry significant implications for how courts treat employee mobility, data ownership, and competitive intelligence gathering across the broader technology sector.
