# OpenAI Fires Back at Apple Trade Secret Lawsuit With Its Own Email Evidence > Source: > Published: 2026-08-04 07:55:57+00:00 *OpenAI published a detailed rebuttal to Apple's corporate espionage lawsuit this week, including internal emails it says prove Apple's own lawyers botched their first attempt to raise the alarm.* Apple sued OpenAI on July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The claim: a coordinated scheme to steal trade secrets tied to unreleased iPhone and Apple Watch hardware. On August 3, OpenAI answered in public, not just in court filings. It published a blog post packed with internal messages meant to undercut the case point by point. Line by line. This is now a real fight between two of the most powerful companies in tech. It's playing out in filings both sides clearly expect the public to read. The lawsuit is filed as Apple Inc. v. Liu. It names OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI Group PBC, io Products, and two individuals: Tang Yew Tan and Chang Liu. Tan is OpenAI's chief hardware officer. He's also a former Apple vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch. Liu is a former senior systems electrical engineer. He spent eight years at Apple before leaving in January 2026 to join OpenAI's hardware division. Apple's complaint calls OpenAI's hardware business "rotten to its core." Strong words for a filing. According to court documents cited by TechCrunch and Fortune, Apple alleges Tan used Apple's internal project code names while recruiting candidates. He allegedly asked job applicants to bring Apple hardware components to interviews. And he circulated an internal Apple document on how departing staff are monitored, so recruits could evade it. Liu, the suit claims, kept an Apple-issued laptop after leaving. He exploited an undisclosed authentication flaw to reach Apple's internal network. He then messaged a colleague, "LOL, I found out I can access the network storage, so funny." Funny, until it's a lawsuit. After that, the suit says, he pulled dozens of confidential hardware files. io Products is Jony Ive's hardware startup, founded in 2024 with Tan among its co-founders. OpenAI acquired it last November for a reported $6.5 billion. Ive himself isn't named as a defendant. But Apple's complaint treats io as central to the alleged scheme. That's notable: OpenAI has staked a lot on Ive's design team, tasked with building the AI gadget Sam Altman has talked up as a successor to the smartphone. ## What OpenAI's rebuttal actually disputes OpenAI's response, as detailed by 9to5Mac, goes after one specific plank of Apple's timeline: the claim that Apple flagged its concerns back in February and got nowhere. OpenAI says that's not what happened. According to the company, an outside attorney from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the law firm representing Apple, sent the February warning to the wrong person. The lawyer mixed up two employees with similar last names. The email meant for one OpenAI staffer instead landed with general counsel Che Chang. OpenAI says it did reply. The five-month gap Apple points to as evidence of stonewalling, the company says, is really just a paperwork error on Apple's side. The company's public statement on the broader case has stayed consistent since July: "We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere." Whether a mixed-up name actually explains a five-month silence is exactly the kind of detail a judge, not a blog post, will have to weigh. But publishing it at all is a tell. Companies being sued rarely lay out internal correspondence in public before discovery forces them to. OpenAI clearly decided the reputational cost of staying quiet was higher than the risk of showing its hand early. Frankly, the timing says as much as the content. This fight is landing just as OpenAI is trying to convince the market it can build consumer hardware that matters. Ive's team and a growing device roadmap are riding on the outcome. A lawsuit calling that operation "rotten to its core" is the kind of headline no amount of rebuttal fully erases. That's true even if OpenAI wins every factual dispute inside it. The lawsuit also lands on top of an already strained relationship. Apple and OpenAI announced their partnership in June 2024, agreeing to build ChatGPT directly into Siri across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. No money changed hands. Apple took a cut of any subscriptions the integration generated instead. That deal has reportedly frustrated OpenAI internally. Reporting from SiliconANGLE and others in May 2026 described OpenAI as unhappy that the Siri integration never converted the subscriber numbers it hoped for. It didn't work, in other words. The same reporting said OpenAI had hired outside counsel to weigh legal options of its own against Apple. Two years after standing together at a product launch, the two companies are now trading accusations in federal court instead. None of that history resolves the actual question in front of the Northern District of California: did specific people move specific files in ways that broke the law. Discovery, not a blog post, is what settles that. **Also read:** [China's Flood of Cheap AI Models Is Pricing Smaller US Labs Out](https://startupfortune.com/chinas-flood-of-cheap-ai-models-is-pricing-smaller-us-labs-out/) • [Alibaba-Backed 3D AI Startup Vast Is Weighing a Hong Kong Listing](https://startupfortune.com/alibaba-backed-3d-ai-startup-vast-is-weighing-a-hong-kong-listing/) • [MoonPay Lets ChatGPT and Claude Spend Your Crypto Behind a Passkey](https://startupfortune.com/moonpay-lets-chatgpt-and-claude-spend-your-crypto-behind-a-passkey/)