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

471–480 of 1001 posts

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

#471

Post by rixed »

rafram wrote: post #255
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…

I’ve been seeing this “high-trust society” dog whistle a lot lately, and I think it’s one of the funniest of its kind. You truly want me to believe that the United States, a country with a history of slavery and segregation, a country that went through a historical period dominated by people literally called “robber barons,” was a high-trust society before immigrants from less industrialized places came and ruined th…

I didn't read this that way at all. Society != country of origin. The US, like any country, is composed of many different cultures and more or less independent societies, some being high-trust/valuing more cooperation and some low-trust, valuing more competition.

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

#472

Post by runako »

bigyabai wrote: post #279
rukuu001 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OpenAI also has infinite money And an infinite money-eating bonfire

Unless Apple protracts the case, that won't become an issue.

Drag out a legal battle? Surely, Apple would never do something like that[1].

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micros....

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

#475

Post by thewhitetulip »

Lio wrote: post #454

OpenAI is a company built on copyright violation. That means it’s in the corporate DNA to treat laws as things for little people. Apple have deep enough pockets that they can actually sue OpenAI but I bet OpenAI are surprised they got caught. Now ask yourself, would the Codex agents on your machine ever over step legal boundaries? Would OpenAI ever make use of data you, voluntarily, send to their servers? If they did…

Don't matter to people who look at codex as a way to replace employees

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

#476

Post by hawaiianbrah »

ElProlactin wrote: post #439
appplication wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An acquaintance of mine was accidentally wired about $100k when it was supposed to be $5k. Before it could be reversed, they moved accounts and immediately bought a one way flight out of country. They then changed all socials and handles. They are now ignoring all court documents and are on track to get a default judgement against them. Their rationale? “It’s mine, they owed me this”. They are 100% convinced that the…

> People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power. It's more that money and power enable you to be who you really are, and amplify your worst traits if you're lacking self-awareness. There are many people who are rich/wealthy and/or powerful and they're decent individuals living relatively ordinary lives. You don't read about most of them because they're "normal".

> It's more that money and power enable you to be who you really are

If you’re only a certain way when you have money and power, is it really “who you really are”?

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

#477

Post by telotortium »

The_Blade wrote: post #250
html5cat wrote: post #197

Interesting how Tang Yew Tan worked at Apple for 25 years (!!) and then threw it all out for this.

who knows, maybe he had giant gambling debts or other addiction(s) or bad real estate investments and/or lost half of it all to an ex-wife first. things that Jony might be readily aware of. assuming there is more than a kernel of truth to this - and i can't imagine not, the OpenAI comms guy who responded already scrubbed his X account - it doesn't surprise me that Tan was a criminal, it's that he was such a bad crimi…

What did he scrub? Looks like an account with posts to me

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

#478

Post by tudelo »

Andrex wrote: post #178
thewebguyd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It would make sense. Massive distribution vector

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

#480

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

cosmicgadget wrote: post #455
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do explain that in more detail deeper in the complaint. They allege that OpenAI has obtained the offboarding checklist for Apple managers, that OpenAI is using it to issue guidance to departing employees on how they can avoid scrutiny, and that employees receiving this guidance have been ignoring Apple security personnel who try to schedule their standard exit processes.

That doesn't sound too heinous. As far as I am aware, employers aren't entitled to exit processes so long as they get their property back. OpenAI possessing an offboarding checklist accessible to any Apple manager doesn't seem like an IP issue. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this part other than Apple trying to imply OpenAI has something to hide.

They're more than trying to imply it. Apple says "This is the tip of the iceberg", and a lawsuit is necessary to uncover the full scope of what they think OpenAI has to hide.

> As far as I am aware, employers aren't entitled to exit processes so long as they get their property back.

They're not, but one of the defendants allegedly dodged returning his company laptop. It's then alleged that he used it to continue accessing Apple documents after he'd already left, and coached at least one other person on how to copy confidential documents without alerting Apple's security team.

If these allegations are supported, it seems pretty reasonable to wonder whether there might be more people he coached and what documents they might have copied undetected.

Post reply on HN