Apple Sues OpenAI Over Hardware Trade Secret Theft

Apple filed a federal lawsuit against OpenAI in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California this week, accusing the artificial intelligence firm of a systematic campaign to steal hardware trade secrets. The 41-page complaint alleges that OpenAI, along with its recently acquired hardware subsidiary io Products, engaged in aggressive recruitment of former Apple hardware engineers and solicited confidential manufacturing processes to advance its own consumer electronics business. The lawsuit brings four claims under the Defend Trade Secrets Act and two breach-of-contract claims to halt the alleged intellectual property theft.

The legal action specifically names OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan and former Apple electrical engineer Chang Liu as individual defendants. Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple and previously served as vice president of product design, is accused of using internal project names during recruitment and directing job candidates to bring actual hardware prototypes to interviews. These prototypes allegedly included batteries, main logic boards, and unreleased system components. Liu, who worked as an electrical engineer at Apple for eight years before joining OpenAI, is accused of exploiting a network vulnerability to download over 1,000 pages of proprietary data.

OpenAI acquired io Products for nearly $6.5 billion USD, a move intended to develop a physical embodiment for its ChatGPT technology. The lawsuit details an institutional pattern of misconduct by OpenAI, which allegedly instructed job candidates to bring physical prototypes to interviews. Apple seeks to halt the ongoing misappropriation of its confidential product designs and unreleased hardware files, aiming to protect its intellectual property from being leveraged by OpenAI's hardware development efforts.