Apple sues OpenAI for poaching iPhone secrets
Apple sues OpenAI for poaching iPhone secrets
Publish Date: 2026-07-14 01:38:00
Source Domain: www.electronicsweekly.com
The lawsuit alleges that some 400 Apple employees have been recruited by OpenAI and actively pushed to reveal Apple trade secrets.
Last year OpenAI paid $6.4 billion to buy iPhone designer Jonny Ive’s startup io Products.
“OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple wrote in its complaint.
Apple’s lawsuit alleges that Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer who was previously an Apple vp took information about Apple suppliers with him to OpenAI and encouraged interviewees at OpenAI to divulge confidential company information.
“He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘actual parts’ from Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information,” states Apple’s lawsuit.
Apple also says employees were instructed to bring “CAD/design artifacts” and “prototypes” to interviews.
If Apple is able to prove that OpenAI incorporated its trade secrets into upcoming devices, OpenAI could be forced to redesign its products.
OpenAI is said to be at such an advanced stage of its phone development that it will announce its first product this year and release it next year and is said to be looking at speakers and wearables as well as phones.
Apple is seeking damages and a court order that would block OpenAI from possessing or using its trade secrets.
