--- title: Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential... description: Apple has escalated its trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, now seeking a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI from developing AI devices or products based... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/apple-says-more-ex-employees-may-have-taken-confidential-data-to-openai-oasjajr8e twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI | daily.dev og:description: Apple has escalated its trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, now seeking a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI from developing AI devices or products based... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/apple-says-more-ex-employees-may-have-taken-confidential-data-to-openai-oasjajr8e og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/oASJajr8e.png og:image:alt: Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI **[TechCrunch](https://daily.dev/sources/tc)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Apple has escalated its trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, now seeking a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI from developing AI devices or products based on Apple's technology. A new court filing reveals that 11 additional former Apple employees beyond the original two accused may have been involved in the alleged theft, with examples including employees sharing proprietary information before OpenAI job interviews and taking screenshots of confidential documents. Apple is also requesting expedited discovery from the accused employees, OpenAI, and io — the device startup co-founded by Jony Ive. OpenAI publicly denied the allegations, calling Apple's injunction request baseless and claiming it neither has nor wants Apple's trade secrets. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 167 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-08-06). **TL;DR:** Commenters are largely critical of OpenAI's conduct and its public blog-post response, while also noting Apple's own history of aggressive IP tactics; the employees who allegedly took data are widely condemned, though Apple's MDM security failures draw some criticism too. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 30% mixed · 60% skeptical **The case for** - Apple is working through proper legal channels (court filings), not social media posts, which commenters see as the more mature approach. - The alleged misconduct — keeping work devices, taking screenshots of confidential docs, accessing systems post-departure — is seen as straightforwardly avoidable and indefensible. - Some see the lawsuit as potentially saving OpenAI from a costly vanity hardware project that may be doomed anyway. **The pushback** - Apple has its own history of illegal anti-poaching agreements and aggressive intimidation of companies that hire its alumni, undermining its moral high ground. - Apple's MDM/offboarding security failures (residual access after employees left) are seen as a real and glaring problem that Apple hasn't solved even for its own systems. - OpenAI's public blog-post response is widely viewed as desperate, inappropriate, and potentially an attempt to taint public perception rather than address the legal merits. - The 'mixing up Asian last names' racism insinuation in OpenAI's response struck commenters as a cynical PR move rather than a substantive defense. - Some commenters are skeptical the alleged theft materially harms Apple, drawing parallels to past Apple lawsuits that were more about intimidation than genuine IP loss. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Strongly critical of both OpenAI's conduct and its public PR response, while also skeptical of Apple's motives given its own history of anti-competitive behavior; the accused employees receive little sympathy. **Hottest debate:** Whether Apple's own poor MDM/offboarding security practices share meaningful blame for the alleged data access, or whether that is simply irrelevant to the legality of what the employees did. **Open questions** - What actual trade secrets were taken and do they provide OpenAI with any meaningful advantage, or is this primarily a deterrence lawsuit? - Will OpenAI's public blog-post response help or hurt its legal position, and could it be used against them in court? - How will courts weigh Apple's residual-access security failures against the employees' alleged deliberate misappropriation? **Highlights** > “It’s your fault we stole your trade secrets” > — [throwatdem12311 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171835) > If your best defense is "it was easy" you're probably not in a legally great position... > — [marricks on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171852) > 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. > — [paxys on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49172890) > 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…" > — [jdross on hackernews · 7 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171927) > Why are you both-sidesing this? Apple is doing it right, simple high level statements. OpenAI is acting like a teenager posting screenshots of literal texts and being overall petulant. This is open and shut. The mature company will win this. > — [VCFundedGenYer on hackernews · 5 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171446) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49170479) · 216 points · 167 comments --- Tags: [#apple](https://daily.dev/tags/apple), [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/apple-says-more-ex-employees-may-have-taken-confidential-data-to-openai-oasjajr8e) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/apple-says-more-ex-employees-may-have-taken-confidential-data-to-openai-oasjajr8e","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/apple-says-more-ex-employees-may-have-taken-confidential-data-to-openai-oasjajr8e"},"datePublished":"2026-08-04T14:07:45.518Z","dateModified":"2026-08-06T15:13:49.614Z","description":"Apple has escalated its trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, now seeking a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI from developing AI devices or products based...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/67973f9ad6e5c94ab4f4b46b0a51e1ff?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/67973f9ad6e5c94ab4f4b46b0a51e1ff?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"TechCrunch","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"TechCrunch","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/tc","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/tc"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/apple-says-more-ex-employees-may-have-taken-confidential-data-to-openai-oasjajr8e","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"apple,openai","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"TechCrunch","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/tc"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI"}]} ```