Apple escalated its legal battle with OpenAI by sending personal legal preservation notices to some 40 of Apple employees that left Cupertino to work for the ChatGPT maker.
The warning letters require current OpenAI workers to save any communications, notes, or other internally related data from their Apple stint and also request in-person meetings with Apple’s lawyers.
This latest escalation comes on the heels of a federal complaint that Apple filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing OpenAI and two Apple alumni of scheming to swipe the company’s proprietary hardware designs, procedures and trade secrets.
Why the warning notices?
Since its complaint now lists less than ten percent of the exodus that brought some more than 400 former Apple employees over to OpenAI, attorneys argued that Apple was really giving its initial filing a preview for what “’a much greater story … where the first pages are barely turned,”’ adding that it was issuing them the warnings to get employees to preserve evidence before the court-mandated discovery.
The two main antagonists in the lawsuit were:
The core of the lawsuit lies in OpenAI’s ambitious efforts to muscle into consumer electronics. It went ahead and shelled out $6.4bn to acquire Jony Ive’s design studio, “io”, so that it could produce non-screen-enabled AI smart devices. But from the looks of this lawsuit, it seems there might be some ethical or rather legal gray areas when it comes to how this technology will be made. Apple claims that employees took proprietary prototypes and accessed networks after leaving their company and enticed the job candidates to expose trade information during their interviews with the new hires, according to court documents.
And what does this really mean?
It represents a messy split for two technology giants that had once been willing to collaborate on integrating some of OpenAI’s technology into Apple’s Siri.
[ Apple Inc. ] [ OpenAI ]
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claims stolen hardware plans Acquired ‘io’ ($6.4B)
and trade secrets. Building devices.
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Filed federal lawsuit, Denies claims and states “no merit”
with notices to ~$40 alumni; before upcoming IPO pressure.
Apple may have been able to establish the “legal-hold tax” on OpenAI’s burgeoning consumer hardware segment that will delay any further production process. And, this will also potentially dissuade other tech employees from considering to shift to OpenAI with a view of making it tough on recruiting. OpenAI will feel the immediate pressure considering the looming IPO.
In its defence, OpenAI did not deny the claims as it continues to take claims of intellectual property infringement very seriously.
However, the company stated that it didn’t have “no interest in leveraging any trade secrets” from rivals as it continues to expand.
