Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI
Apple is escalating its trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, seeking a preliminary injunction and expedited discovery. The company now claims that at least 11 other former employees may have been involved in leaking proprietary information, including details about unannounced products. OpenAI denies the allegations, calling Apple's request baseless and pointing to Apple's own security lapses.
Apple's request for a preliminary injunction is 'both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets.'
- jdross
Apple is cutthroat in business too.
Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod and co-inventor of the iPhone, and later Nest founder, commented this in Stratechery about the lawsuit when filed:
"This is Apple’s typical tactic to scare Apple employees — either former or current. I heard this lawsuit was driven by the Apple board.
Steve threatened to file a lawsuit against Nest for poaching 80-100 Apple employees. He called me, screamed for a while with lots of accusations. Then I said, “Steve, it’s Apple’s job to retain its talent, not mine.” He stopped his rant and then we went on to talk about our families and vacation plans. We kept hiring…"
- paxys
This entire OpenAI hardware thing is a vanity project by Sam Altman wanting really bad to be Steve Jobs. Just look at this comical announcment photo and letter from last year https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/. If this lawsuit results in the whole thing getting canned it might actually be good for OpenAI because it'll save them from pouring further billions down the drain over what will eventually be the Humane Pin 2.0.
- hingler36
A lot of the discussion here is pretty surprising. Saying "The information is in people's heads" is wild considering the allegations involve taking screenshots of documents, not just fond memories of working on hardware. Apple deserves a lot of criticism for how it's acted when losing employees, but these allegations are about a lot more than that.
- SiempreViernes
> And, [OpenAI] said that Apple didn’t admit to the claim that the “residual access” allowing former employees to access Apple’s system was the result of poor security procedures on Apple’s part.
Sam "I hack others by mistake" Altman dunking on the security practice of others is funny, is there any glass house he won't go to?
- Melatonic
Saw this in the legal filing:
"he took advantage of an authentication bug to gain access to Apple’s confidential third-party cloud repository to download at
least thirty-seven highly sensitive and proprietary technical documents related to, among other things,
Apple’s hardware technologies and research and development."
Anybody know what they mean by "third party" ? Who provides Apple internal employees with a cloud repository?
- gitpusher
15 years ago we'd all be drooling breathlessly, wondering what sort of magical, earth-shattering new product Apple has been cooking up behind the scenes, and will we get to learn any details about it from the court case.
Today... Who cares? Lol. I'm not convinced there's anything going on at Apple, secret or otherwise, that we would find particularly interesting.
- datakan
Really don't like all the drama around this. Should be dealt with in court, not tried in the press.
Both sides should learn to remain silent and work the case through legal channels.
- test6554
Open AI is about to find out all about rounded corners