Apple sued OpenAI on Friday, alleging the AI company has stolen the iPhone maker’s trade secrets to develop its own yet-to-be-unveiled AI gadgets.
In the suit, filed in the District Court of Northern California, Apple accuses OpenAI of trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract.
↫ Lisa Eadicicco and Hadas Gold at CNN
I find this about as interesting and watching artificial grass grow, but with the common wisdom being that Apple is behind on “AI”, it was honestly only a matter of time before the lawsuits came. After all, that’s usually what companies who can’t win in the market do. At the very least this will give corporate tech news websites a whole slew of new material.
I just hope they both implode. We’d all be better off for it.
Clearly apple property needs to be returned. But other than that sorry apple, employees leaving are under no obligation to sign anything. If this really is apple’s policy, it comes across as extremely petty and I wouldn’t sign out of principal. Agreements need to be signed BEFORE employees gain access to confidential information. Duh!
Timing is everything. Did this happen while Liu was employed. Did the employee account have access to these materials? If so then I don’t see foul play.
I understand that poaching employees is very annoying to the company being poached, but it’s not illegal and states like california don’t allow non-compete agreements. If apple can produce actual evidence of wrongdoing, fair enough, but it’s just as plausible that these allegations are reaching by a company that found themselves behind the curve and is turning to lawsuits for leverage.
Why is Apple trying to let people sign something when they leave ? Is this some silly US culture thing ? You let people sign stuff when they join a company that should be enough. I even assume the company already did that anyway, so sharing information to the new employer would be illegal.
Lennie,
Exit interviews are common. Signing NDAs and contracts up front is normal BEFORE you start a project obviously. An employer asking you to sign it after the fact would imply they messed up in the on-boarding or they’ve changed their mind about something in your contract, Either I’ve never seen this from the US companies I’ve worked for and only a scummy company have make it their policy IMHO. I would only consider signing one if the company was agreeing to offer something in exchange.
The thing that Liu was asked to sign is a confidentiality REMINDER. They are pretty common. The reason they exist is so that when you leave the company with, say, a laptop full of information you have already legally agreed not to share, you can’t pretend you did so accidentally i.e. it lets a company treat any breach of confidentiality agreements as intentional.
Brainworm,
The company is free to remind you of what you already signed to, but making you sign new documents without anything in return is one sided. You have no legal obligation to sign for anything you don’t want to. If the company tries for force you to do so that’s coercion. Say they are offering something something like a golden parachute or extending health care benefits, then fine…sign a new agreement in exchange for something. It’s advisable to have a lawyer review documents before signing legal documents, but if you are signing a one sided agreement in exchange for literally nothing to you, then you already know it’s objectively a foolish thing to sign.
Liu very well may have had such an obligation. Agreeing to undertake the exit process (exit interview, key & equipment return, etc.,) as a condition of hire is pretty common, and one reason companies will claw back e.g. signing bonuses when someone departs.
But the issue here is not that Liu didn’t sign his reminder. It’s that he skipped the entire exit process including — crucially — turning in his company laptop, and that he did so _knowingly_.
This is why Apple is talking “trade secrets.” It’s no crime to unknowingly be in possession of trade secrets, but ABSOLUTELY a crime for Liu to convey the trade secret material that was on his laptop to OpenAI, and also a crime for them to receive it, and also a crime for any other person or company to facilitate that process. The details are in 18 USC 1832.
Basically, the fact that Liu ducked signing the confidentiality reminder is just as damning as if he signed it. That’s why it’s there — not to get the signature, but to demonstrate intent.
Brainworm,
It’s not uncommon to have exit interviews, but lets not move the goalpost, we’re talking about apple forcing employees to sign documents upon leaving, which goes beyond the scope of a normal exit interview.
No, the fact is Liu either was or was not bound to a prior contract. Apple are not entitled to force employees deciding to leave into signing new documents. If it is true that apple are intimidating employees into this, then it’s more damning of apple than the employee choosing not to sign, which is the employee’s right! Of course you’re welcome to defend apple, but if you are suggesting that employees don’t have the right of refusal, that’s a big no-no for contract law even in the US…
https://uslawexplained.com/coercion
OpenAI have poached a load of people from Apple. Same as Apple did to Google and others. It goes in cycles. With the herd flocking to the latest trendy of the month.
That’s quite far-fetched (“Because Apple is behind, they sue OpenAI”.) At least back up your personal thoughts and emotions with data. You could argue they are not behind as much; they licensed Gemini and they are well positioned hardware-wise. What is “behind” anyway? How do you quantify that?
d4cl00,
Sure, but the onus is on the one doing the suing, which is apple in this case. Several years from now we may get an update on the case, if it doesn’t get settled out of court first.
Fair questions to which I don’t have clear answers. However Apple famously hates being beholden to others technology. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they licensed the technology because apple themselves knew they were behind. Otherwise apple wouldn’t be caught dead licensing other’s technology, they would be casting shade at Gemini, as is apple’s modus operandi, instead of licensing it.
“settled out of court”
I assume it will, which would be a nice little bonus for Apple, taking some money from these other companies that are getting so much money because people believe AI is the future in a huge way (there is AI in our future for sure, but it does not seem likely it will be all the AGI, etc. some imagine).
I suspect they are seeing the major AI players driving themselves off a cliff and they rather wait that out instead of trying to compete in their terms and going down with them. Also, Apple has had no problem ceding web search to Google. Gemini looks a lot like a Search 2.0 accord to me while they reconfigure their product lines to make local AI easier.
Back to the OpenAI case, it seems there are some smoking guns there. We’ll see.