OpenAI has asked a federal judge to throw out Apple's trade secrets lawsuit, calling the case 'meritless' in a motion to dismiss filed August 5, 2026. The filing argues Apple mischaracterized ordinary product development information as trade secrets and misread the actions of former Apple employees now working at OpenAI as theft. A hearing on the motion is set for October 1st.
Apple filed the underlying complaint in July 2026, alleging that several former Apple staff who moved to OpenAI took confidential documents to accelerate OpenAI's hardware development plans. The suit named engineers who worked on Apple's internal AI and device programs and accused them of coordinated exfiltration. OpenAI's motion disputes both the framing and the evidence, arguing Apple made no reasonable effort to keep the material at issue confidential in the first place.
One employee, Chang Liu, sits at the center of the dispute. Apple's complaint alleges Liu downloaded confidential files from Apple systems after announcing his departure. OpenAI's motion says Liu was responding to requests from former colleagues for help and that the underlying material was not the kind of protected trade secret Apple now claims.
Key facts
- 01OpenAI filed a motion on August 5, 2026 asking a federal judge to dismiss Apple's July 2026 trade secrets lawsuit.
- 02OpenAI's filing calls the case 'meritless,' 'generic,' and 'rotten to its core.'
- 03Apple accuses former employee Chang Liu of downloading confidential files after leaving for OpenAI; OpenAI says he was helping ex-colleagues.
- 04Apple filed a preliminary injunction request on Monday to block OpenAI staff from using the alleged information during the case.
- 05The judge will hear arguments on the dismissal motion on October 1st.
The filing follows a blog post OpenAI published Tuesday titled 'Apple is getting this wrong,' which described the lawsuit as 'careless, aggressive, and oddly personal.' The dismissal motion carries much of that language into court, alleging Apple's case is poorly investigated and built on selective or out-of-context communications. OpenAI's filing calls the complaint 'rotten to its core.'
“Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent and retaining its employees, and its failures to integrate AI into its products.”— OpenAI, From OpenAI's motion to dismiss
OpenAI's central argument is that Apple is using litigation to compensate for losing a talent war it cannot win on merits. The motion frames Apple's product-integration failures and departing engineers as the real backdrop of the case.
The company frames the hiring flow as an inevitable consequence of its product roadmap rather than the result of any coordinated raid on Apple's IP. That framing matters for the legal test: California is a right-to-work state where non-competes are largely unenforceable, and trade secret cases typically turn on specific misappropriated files rather than the movement of talent itself.
“OpenAI is building something entirely new and different from anything at Apple. OpenAI does have an interest in hiring the best engineers, inventors, developers and creators — many of whom have decided to leave Apple and to come to OpenAI, attracted by the innovative and exciting work the company is doing.”— OpenAI, From OpenAI's motion to dismiss
Apple is not standing still while the motion is pending. On Monday, Apple asked the court for a preliminary injunction that would bar OpenAI and the named former employees from accessing, acquiring, using, or disclosing the allegedly confidential information for the duration of the case. If granted, the order would constrain how the named engineers can work inside OpenAI on any project that touches hardware or on-device AI.
The dispute lands against a specific commercial backdrop. Apple's own AI rollout has been slower than the company originally previewed, and Sam Altman's OpenAI has been visibly building out consumer hardware ambitions, including work with former Apple designer Jony Ive. Apple's complaint reads, in part, as an attempt to slow that expansion. OpenAI's motion reads as an attempt to reframe the entire dispute as a labor-market fight dressed up in trade secrets law.
The weakness in OpenAI's position is that dismissal motions rarely succeed when the plaintiff has named specific files, specific employees, and specific timestamps. Even if Apple's broader theory is thin, a judge is more likely to let discovery proceed than to end a trade secrets case at the pleading stage. Apple's parallel injunction request suggests it expects to move to the evidentiary phase regardless of how October's hearing goes.
The larger point is that Apple's suit and OpenAI's response now define the legal template for talent-driven AI hardware disputes. Every frontier lab is hiring aggressively from incumbents, and every incumbent is watching product roadmaps walk out the door. How the judge rules on October 1st — whether the case survives, narrows, or gets tossed — will set the reference point for the next round of complaints between Big Tech and the AI labs eating into their engineering ranks.
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