OpenAI blames Apple for trade-secret dispute

Apple sued OpenAI in July. OpenAI’s response, essentially: this is your fault. The legal confrontation, filed on July 10, 2026, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, centers on Apple’s claim that OpenAI and its hardware subsidiary io Products orchestrated a coordinated effort to misappropriate sensitive hardware designs, manufacturing methods, and confidential engineering documents. OpenAI’s rebuttal, published in a blog post on August 4, 2026, flipped the script entirely. Rather than defending against the specifics of Apple’s accusations, OpenAI argued that Apple’s own offboarding processes and workplace security practices made the alleged leak possible in the first place. The argument, stripped down: if your former employees still had access to your files after leaving, that is a security problem, not a theft conspiracy. What Apple actually alleges Apple’s complaint names two former employees, Tang Yew Tan and Chang Liu, both of whom moved to OpenAI after their time at Apple. The suit characterizes their departure as part of a broader, deliberate strategy by OpenAI to absorb proprietary knowledge from one of its biggest rivals in the hardware space. Th...