OpenAI has formally requested the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Apple, asserting in a court filing on Monday that Apple has failed to provide specific evidence that its former employees misappropriated confidential information upon joining the artificial intelligence company.
The motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in response to a lawsuit Apple initiated earlier this year. Apple’s original complaint alleges that several of its former engineers, who now work at OpenAI, took sensitive data related to the company’s autonomous systems and artificial intelligence projects.
In its filing, OpenAI contended that Apple’s lawsuit lacks the necessary detail to proceed. The company argued that the legal claims do not sufficiently identify which specific trade secrets were allegedly stolen, by whom, or how they were used.
According to OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, Apple’s allegations are “vague and conclusory” and do not meet the legal standards required to sustain a trade secret misappropriation claim. The document states that for such a case to move forward, the plaintiff must describe the allegedly stolen trade secrets with “reasonable particularity.”
Apple’s lawsuit, filed in March, named both OpenAI and multiple former employees as defendants. The complaint claimed that these employees downloaded proprietary documents and data before their departure from Apple. The information in question reportedly pertains to advanced AI hardware, software architecture, and other specialized technologies developed internally at Apple.
The legal dispute highlights the increasing competition for specialized talent within the technology sector, particularly in the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence. Both Apple and OpenAI are significant developers of AI technology, and movement of engineers and researchers between major tech firms is common.
Representatives for Apple have not yet filed a formal response to OpenAI’s motion to dismiss. A judge will review the arguments from both companies before ruling on whether the lawsuit will be dismissed or allowed to proceed to the next stage of litigation. The case is one of several recent legal challenges between major technology companies involving allegations of intellectual property theft and employee poaching.
