By Stephen Nellis and Deepa Seetharaman
NEW YORK, Oct 14 (Reuters) – An OpenAI employee who left the ChatGPT maker for Apple sent more than 100 files about an unreleased product to a personal account and later made a presentation about the unreleased product to senior Apple leadership, a new filing in the lawsuit between OpenAI and Apple alleges.
In the filing in US federal court in San Jose, California, OpenAI alleged that the presentation happened months ago and that Apple is now making AI products of its own, citing the release of Apple’s HomeView product this week.
“OpenAI is very concerned that its trade secret and confidential information is now circulating inside Apple, where Apple engineers can shape Apple’s upcoming products based on OpenAI’s confidential and innovative work,” OpenAI said in its filing.
Apple said that it has policies and procedures in place to ensure new employees do not use confidential information from previous employers and that it has found no evidence to support OpenAI’s allegations.
The document, filed on Tuesday, is part of an ongoing trade secret dispute filed by Apple earlier this year in which it alleged employees of the iPhone maker left and took confidential information to OpenAI’s hardware division. OpenAI has denied those allegations.
Earlier this week, US District Court Judge Edward Davila granted part of Apple’s request to get early access to digital files from OpenAI in the suit.
Davila said Apple could gather data from some of its former employees’ devices and sit three of them for depositions on a sped-up schedule, including the two defendants in the case — Chang Liu, a former senior system electrical engineer, and Tang Yew Tan, a former vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch.
The case is likely to go to trial in October 2027, though OpenAI has said in court filings that it could be ready for trial as soon as June 2027.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in New York and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco, Editing by Franklin Paul and Bill Berkrot)
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