Apple and OpenAI head to court in trade secrets battle

Apple and OpenAI will face off in a California court on Wednesday over the iPhone maker’s claims that the AI start-up stole its trade secrets, marking the first substantive public hearing in a blockbuster legal case that has rocked Silicon Valley.

The hearing comes as the two tech giants, which struck a high-profile partnership just two years ago to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone’s operating system, have been embroiled in an increasingly bitter public argument.

Hundreds of former Apple employees have joined OpenAI, which is developing a new personal AI device. The ChatGPT creator acquired io, the hardware start-up founded by former Apple design chief Sir Jony Ive, for $6.4bn in 2025.

Apple claims that OpenAI and two former Apple employees, including OpenAI’s now chief hardware officer Tang Tan, stole trade secrets including confidential product designs and proprietary information about its manufacturing processes.

OpenAI argues that the iPhone maker filed a baseless lawsuit in order to discourage its employees from leaving and has misrepresented legitimate communications and hiring practices by employees it poached from Apple. Ive, who left Apple in 2019, is not named as a defendant in Apple’s lawsuit.

The hearing could shed light on how credible senior federal judge Edward J Davila deems Apple’s case to be, after weeks of back-and-forth court filings.

Wednesday’s hearing concerns two separate motions. Apple is asking the judge to hit OpenAI with a court injunction preventing it from accessing or using its trade secrets, or from deleting or concealing evidence. OpenAI, meanwhile, is asking for the lawsuit to be thrown out.

On Tuesday, the judge partially granted Apple’s request to expedite OpenAI’s handover of some evidence in the case, including organising the depositions of the former Apple employees named in the lawsuit.

OpenAI’s move to compete head to head with Apple in the consumer hardware market has complicated the relationship between the two companies. Apple this year partnered with Google to support its latest AI features.

OpenAI has confirmed it was frustrated with the limited consumer interest in the iPhone’s ChatGPT integration, and what it said was a failure by Apple to properly invest in the partnership. It was contemplating its own legal action shortly before Apple blindsided it with the trade secrets lawsuit.

OpenAI’s legal battle with the $4.9tn tech company comes as it prepares for a potential public listing as soon as next year. The start-up is in the midst of a separate legal and regulatory backlash over a growing list of hacking and safety incidents involving its products.

Apple has meanwhile faced a faltering start with its own AI launch, with years of delays to its upgraded Siri voice assistant, which rolled out in beta last month but remains unavailable in the EU due to a regulatory stand-off.

The iPhone maker has since sent legal warning letters to dozens of its former employees now at OpenAI, the FT previously reported.