Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#171

Post by enraged_camel »

overfeed wrote: post #90
Robdel12 wrote: post #70

OpenAI is about to get ROCKED on this. From this report, this looks open and shut. Apple has basically infinite money and incredible lawyers. Not sure what OpenAI can counter with unless they have clear, hard evidence this hasn’t been happening.

OpenAI also has infinite money, and the graph for money/lawyering gets clamped well below what OpenAI can afford. It's going to end most other corporate courtroom tangles: with an undisclosed settlement and a well-publicized partnership.

>> OpenAI also has infinite money

Except OpenAI needs every cent of that money for compute, and they don't have healthy profits that can replenish what they spend.

Their financial situation is simply not comparable to that of Apple's.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#172

Post by rileymat2 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #138
tehjoker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, companies retaining a competitive advantage with each other is good for their investors but bad for the public. It's usually to the public's benefit for employees to share knowledge, it makes goods and services cheaper and more available.

If "eliminate all IP law" is your preference then that's fine but it isn't a reason to commit crimes while we have these laws.

IP law can be a thing while maximizing transparency by not including trade secrets as a concept.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#175

Post by kelnos »

khurs wrote: post #151
Aurornis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets even worse. The person not only kept the laptop and used an exploit to download confidential Apple documents, they bragged about it to a contact who was still working at Apple who was also feeding him information: > Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI. He also maint…

"Whenever I leave a company I make sure..." But its also that companies responsibility to ensure that the employer doesn't take anything. Apple know how to use MDM on Apple laptops, why wasn't the device locked and located.

Absolutely, but just as it's not ok to enter someone's home just because they forgot to lock the door, it's not ok to exploit access at your old employer because their offboarding process missed something.

I do the same as GP does; I don't want there to be any chance that my former employer has forgotten to revoke access to something, so I make sure to clear out anything that might remain on any device that I don't return to them.

Who knows, maybe another former employee will decide to steal from them around the same time I leave, and me having access credentials on a personal device, even if I haven't used it, might arouse suspicion.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#176

Post by benoau »

uhfraid wrote: post #162

I forgot they were still working on a device, any guesses what it is? I’m guessing a wrist wearable

I’d guess phone, anything else is too compute-constrained and just an accessory for them, plus has to pay 30% of subscriptions and can be disadvantaged strategically.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#177

Post by mandevil »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #170
joe_mamba wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them Because you're probably come from a high trust culture where you've been taught reciprocal trust, responsibility and accountability, but there's people coming from low trust environments where exploiting loopholes and scamming everyone outside their inner circle is the norm, and it's the way they learned to get ahead in l…

Ok, the implication that I'm reading between the lines is that this sort of behaviour is somehow more tolerated by people with names like Liu and Tan, but is this actually the case? I know there's some evidence of Chinese people working at big tech and feeding data back to the CCP but is this a "low trust culture" issue in general or an extrapolation of that one pattern?

Heh, as a (very white) American I presumed it was America in general today. From what I can see, it seems to be turning into a place where it's all scams, rug-pulls, crypto and sports gambling. This concerns me about the world that my 9 year old is growing up in, the only world he's ever known, even the early 2010s seemed to be higher trust than the past decade has felt like.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#178

Post by Andrex »

thewebguyd wrote: post #65
LoganDark wrote: post #47

Weirdly, this seems like they're trying to train a model to work like Apple? They seem really interested in processes and how stuff is done, rather than only the finished artifacts.

Given that allegedly hardware information was involved I’d lean more toward this is for developing either custom silicon based on Apple’s designs or OpenAI wants to make consumer hardware. Aren’t they making something with Jony Ive too?

There's rumors they've been planning a phone.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/29/everything-we-know-abou...

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#179

Post by tiohijazi »

khurs wrote: post #151
Aurornis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets even worse. The person not only kept the laptop and used an exploit to download confidential Apple documents, they bragged about it to a contact who was still working at Apple who was also feeding him information: > Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI. He also maint…

"Whenever I leave a company I make sure..." But its also that companies responsibility to ensure that the employer doesn't take anything. Apple know how to use MDM on Apple laptops, why wasn't the device locked and located.

what part of "Mr. Tan warns them not to tell Apple that they have taken jobs at OpenAI, so they can stay at Apple as long as they can." did you miss?

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#180

Post by paxys »

khurs wrote: post #151
Aurornis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets even worse. The person not only kept the laptop and used an exploit to download confidential Apple documents, they bragged about it to a contact who was still working at Apple who was also feeding him information: > Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI. He also maint…

"Whenever I leave a company I make sure..." But its also that companies responsibility to ensure that the employer doesn't take anything. Apple know how to use MDM on Apple laptops, why wasn't the device locked and located.

Um, no. Why would it be their responsibility? There are laws regarding IP theft. If you willingly break them you can't just say "well your security wasn't good enough".
Post reply on HN