OpenAI Asks Judge to Throw Out Apple's Trade Secrets Lawsuit

Key points

• OpenAI filed a motion to dismiss Apple's trade secrets lawsuit on the same day it published a public blog post attacking the case.
• Apple sued OpenAI in July 2025, alleging former Apple employees stole confidential documents before joining the AI company.
• A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments on OpenAI's dismissal motion on 1 October 2025.
• Apple separately asked a judge on Monday for a preliminary injunction, a court order that would block OpenAI and named employees from using any alleged confidential information while the case continues.

OpenAI wants a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by Apple, calling it a baseless attempt to blame OpenAI for Apple's own struggle to keep top engineers and build competitive AI products.

What is this lawsuit actually about?

Apple sued OpenAI in July, claiming that former Apple employees who later joined OpenAI took confidential documents with them. The heart of the accusation: those documents allegedly helped OpenAI's hardware development plans.

OpenAI pushed back hard this week. First came a combative blog post titled "Apple is getting this wrong," reported by The Verge AI, which called the case "careless, aggressive, and oddly personal." Then came the formal legal filing asking the judge to dismiss the whole thing.

What does OpenAI say in its defence?

OpenAI says Apple is doing two things it should not be allowed to do. First, it is calling ordinary employee behaviour theft. Second, it is dressing up vague, general product information as trade secrets, which are legally protected pieces of genuinely secret business information.

Take Chang Liu, a former Apple staffer now at OpenAI. Apple accuses him of downloading confidential files after leaving the company. OpenAI says he was simply helping old colleagues who asked him for assistance. Nothing sinister, the company argues.

OpenAI's filing puts it bluntly: "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."

That is a pointed line. OpenAI is essentially saying Apple is suing because it cannot compete for engineers, not because anything was actually stolen.

What happens next?

The judge hears arguments on 1 October. Until then, Apple has also asked the court for a preliminary injunction to freeze the situation: a temporary legal block preventing OpenAI and the named employees from touching, sharing or using any of the alleged confidential material while the lawsuit plays out.

That injunction request means even if the dismissal fails, Apple wants guardrails in place quickly.

For ordinary readers, this is a fight worth watching. If courts decide that employees simply moving between companies counts as trade secret theft, that could make it much harder for anyone in tech to change jobs. OpenAI is arguing the opposite: that people have the right to go where the interesting work is.

Common questions

Does this affect ChatGPT or Apple products I use today?

No. This is a legal dispute between two companies, and no products are currently blocked or changed because of it.

What is a trade secret, in plain terms?

A trade secret is any piece of genuinely private business information, a recipe, a design, a list, that a company actively keeps secret and that gives it a commercial edge. Courts only protect it if the company took real steps to keep it confidential.