By now, many will have seen the allegations that Apple has thrown at OpenAI. Apple is alleging the theft of confidential information. Headlines cite a former engineer who moved to OpenAI allegedly gloating "LOL" over purported unauthorized access to Apple's network and a Chief Hardware Officer allegedly telling job candidates to bring "actual parts" to interviews. Apple is in effect alleging corporate espionage of the highest order and its pleadings make for thrilling reading.

As things stand, Apple has filed a suit in the Northern District of California against OpenAI and two former Apple employees now working for OpenAI, alleging trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract. The complaint alleges that Chang Liu, a former Senior System Electrical Engineer who left Apple in January 2026, kept hold of an Apple laptop, exploited an authentication bug to get into Apple's shared network folders, and downloaded a stack of confidential hardware files. Separately, it is alleged that Tang Yew Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran who is now OpenAI's Chief Hardware Officer, used his old Apple relationships and know-how to squeeze confidential information out of Apple staff during OpenAI's own hiring process.

If even half of the specific factual allegations hold up, particularly a former employee actively accessing Apple's systems after he had left, and a hiring process apparently designed to extract a competitor's confidential information, OpenAI has a genuinely hard case to answer. This does not appear to be the usual grumbling about an ex-employee taking general know-how to a rival, although the case may not be as clear as Apple would want you to believe.

OpenAI is pushing back. It came out swinging with a public rebuttal titled, pointedly, "Apple is getting this wrong". OpenAI also published iMessages that it says show Apple's own staff asking Chang Liu for help finding files after he'd left, not the other way round, and argues the real problem according to OpenAI’s statement is that Apple simply doesn't lock down departing employees' access properly. OpenAI insists it doesn't have, and doesn't want, Apple's trade secrets.

Beyond the eye-grabbing headlines, the claims against Apple’s ex-employees sit right on the fault line of what confidentiality law can and can't do. Both men spent years absorbing Apple's hardware playbook. That is exactly what the law of confidence, at least in the UK, has never been able to stop, namely a former employee taking the general skill, judgment, and experience they built up in a job and using it somewhere else, even when a competitor benefits handsomely from it. Apple will likely need to show tangible examples of confidential material being misappropriated, rather than two highly experienced and specialized individuals carrying on their trade which they refined over many years at Apple.

The alleged accessing of Apple’s systems is an interesting point, which can cut both ways. OpenAI's defence leans hard on the idea that Apple left the back door open, and that the ex-employee was asked by Apple staff to access its systems through “residual access”. OpenAI could argue that by allowing residual access to its systems, Apple was not taking the necessary steps to protect its confidential information. OpenAI would then look to plant a question in a judge or jury’s mind as to whether it is correct to say that this information can still be treated as confidential at all. 

None of this is happening in a vacuum, of course. OpenAI partnered with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iOS and Siri, however OpenAI is now gearing up to launch its own hardware. It is hard not to read Apple's suit as at least partly an attempt to stymie a new competitor before it gets going. There are elements of Apple's pleading that appear to carry real weight, particularly the alleged interview practices and the unreturned devices. But once OpenAI's account is factored in, the case looks significantly less clear-cut than the initial headlines suggest.

Whichever way this case goes, it serves as a useful reminder of how hard it is to actually protect against employees repurposing information acquired on the job, and a reminder that practical, properly enforced offboarding, not just an NDA, is what will often keep information safe. This is also a reminder that in particularly fast-moving industries, enforcing gardening leave or a time-limited non-compete can often be the most practical means of protecting confidential information.