Apple’s legal team has dispatched preservation letters to approximately 40 former employees currently employed at OpenAI, instructing them to retain documents and communications related to their tenure at Apple and their subsequent departure, according to a new report.
Event Context
This action, as per the Financial Times, comes roughly a week after Apple initiated its trade-secret lawsuit against OpenAI, io Products, and two identified former Apple engineers, Chang Liu and Tang Tan, for stealing secret hardware plans.
Apple’s complaint reveals that more than 400 people who previously worked for Apple are now part of OpenAI. The 40 letters are addressed to individuals who are not named as defendants.
As a result, this places each of them under a personal obligation to document relevant information before the formal discovery process begins, thereby securing evidence and creating a legal-hold obligation on any hardware work that OpenAI is currently engaged in.
OpenAI and Apple are yet to issues any statement in this regard.
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The move to send personal legal letters to employees underscores Apple’s assertive strategies, following its recent initiation of a significant lawsuit against OpenAI and two of its employees for allegedly misappropriating confidential hardware designs.
This confrontation arises as the creator of ChatGPT collaborates with the former chief designer of the smartphone company to create its own devices.
In its legal documents, Apple asserted that the evidence it presented was merely the “tip of the iceberg” concerning the purported actions of OpenAI. The AI laboratory has responded by stating that, while it takes the claims seriously, it is unaware of “any evidence that the complaint has merit.”
OpenAI stated that it had “no interest” in the trade secrets of other firms.
The lawsuit represented a significant deterioration in the relationship between two prominent entities in Silicon Valley, resulting in a substantial legal challenge for the start-up as it gears up for its eagerly awaited initial public offering (IPO).
Apple’s legal action asserts that OpenAI’s entire hardware division is jeopardized due to the misappropriation of trade secrets, resulting in legal challenges for its ambitions to introduce its own range of AI devices.
Player Focus
The two firms have previously collaborated to incorporate OpenAI’s technology into Apple’s voice assistant, Siri. However, Apple has since allied with Google for its latest functionalities, utilizing Google’s models as the basis for its ChatGPT-like voice and text assistant launched in June.
