Apple’s latest filing in its ongoing fight with OpenAI makes it sound as if Apple legal is so frustrated at the arguments the AI firm is making that it’s begun swatting them away like a parent might dismiss a child.
If you’ve not been keeping up with tech’s latest legal soap opera, here’s the overview of what’s true: What’s also clear is the tone of Apple’s litigation, which appears to have shifted to exasperation. For example:
“Defendants’ arguments about the individual defendants ignore the legal standard on a motion to dismiss. Again and again, Defendants rely on attorney argument or extrinsic evidence, hypothesize about implausible explanations for a Defendant’s ‘innocent’ misconduct, and ask the Court to draw inferences in their own favor. That is not how a motion to dismiss works. As long as Apple has alleged ‘enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,’ Defendants’ disagreement on the merits is irrelevant.”
You get a similar tone at the end of the filing, where Apple points out: “As for Defendants’ argument that, ‘the access it complains of was identified and shut off by Apple before it filed suit,’ that does not address OpenAI’s continued use of the materials Defendants took, nor does it address other ways Open AI seeks to misappropriate Apple’s trade secrets….”
Again and again in the filing, Apple’s legal team looks to absolutely demolish the arguments raised by OpenAI. You also see them hint at additional evidence the company expects to find during discovery that it will subsequently present once the case reaches trial. You even see them argue that aspects of OpenAI’s denial actually help prove Apple’s claims, when it says, for example, “In any case, the value of Apple’s trade secrets can be plausibly inferred from the lengths to which Defendants have gone to acquire them.”
It’s hard not to hear the impatience in some of the phrasing — you can read it for yourself right here.
That phrasing is deliberate, of course. Ultimately, Apple’s legal team knows that OpenAI is not doing itself any favors in the way it is denying the claims made against it, and the company hopes that by convincingly pointing out the weaknesses in the defense arguments it will leave the judge with little option but to let Apple take its litigation to the next stage.
While not necessarily relevant to the case, it may also be worth pointing out that OpenAI has also been accused by Elon Musk’s xAI of [stealing trade secrets](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/musks-xai-accuses-rival-openai-132225818.html), which may yet come up as an aside here, if only to show a claimed pattern of behavior.
If Apple does succeed in its arguments, the tone it has set very much shows it to be [defining the battle space](https://www.computerworld.com/article/4199537/apple-and-the-changing-of-the-guard.html). Successfully doing so will be even more strategically vital once its competitor [finally manages to](https://www.applemust.com/jony-ive-says-openais-first-mysterious-consumer-gadget-will-ship-within-two-years/) introduce the world to [Jony Ive’s magic donut AI device](https://www.applemust.com/the-core-curated-news-collection-august-5-7/).
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