There has been a new development in the legal fight between Apple and OpenAI due to trade secret allegations. OpenAI applied to the federal court to dismiss Apple’s lawsuit. While the company argued that the accusations made by Apple had no legal basis, it claimed that the activities of former employees were portrayed as theft and that most of the information defined as trade secrets in the case file consisted of general product development processes. OpenAI also claimed that Apple failed to demonstrate that it actually took reasonable precautions to keep the information in question confidential.
In the lawsuit it filed in July, Apple claimed that some former employees who left the company and joined OpenAI contributed to OpenAI’s hardware development efforts by taking confidential documents. OpenAI first responded to these claims in a statement published at the beginning of the week. “Apple is getting this wrong” He responded with a blog post titled (Apple gets this wrong). The company is now bringing the same defenses to its official court application, demanding that the case be dismissed entirely.
OpenAI suggests Apple’s claims are based on incomplete review
In the petition submitted to the court, OpenAI argues that Apple’s case file is based on incomplete research, selected communication records were interpreted out of context, and therefore the basis of the case is weak. The company states that the events claimed by Apple cannot be described as trade secret theft, and that some documents in the case file do not meet the confidentiality criteria.
Chang Liu, one of the former Apple employees mentioned in the petition, is one of the important topics of the defense. Apple claimed that Liu downloaded confidential files after leaving the company. OpenAI, on the other hand, states that this does not reflect the truth and claims that Liu only supported his former colleagues who requested help and that these actions cannot be considered within the scope of trade secret theft. Accordingly, Apple’s claims do not reflect the true context of events.
OpenAI also implies that Apple did not file the lawsuit solely to protect trade secrets. In the documents submitted by the company to the court, it is claimed that Apple is using this case to compensate for the difficulties it has in retaining qualified employees and its shortcomings in the field of artificial intelligence. While OpenAI emphasizes that the products it develops are completely different from the systems Apple works on, it argues that hiring experienced engineers and developers is a normal element of competition in the technology industry. The company states that employees who left Apple and moved to OpenAI did so by their own choice and that they showed interest in the company due to its work in the field of artificial intelligence.
On the other hand, Apple also took a new step to speed up the legal process. The company requested an interim injunction in its application to the court on Monday. Apple wants OpenAI and the former employees named in the lawsuit to be prevented from accessing, obtaining, using or sharing the allegedly confidential information with third parties until the case is resolved.
The next important stage in the case will take place on October 1. The federal court will consider OpenAI’s application to dismiss the case on this date. The court’s decision will be followed carefully not only in terms of the dispute between the two companies, but also in terms of how the legal balance between employee mobility in the technology sector and the protection of trade secrets will be interpreted. In this process, the evaluation regarding the request for interim measures is among the topics that may directly affect the progress of the case.
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