Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by throwa356262 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:31 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #431

Just remembering randomly here, xAI also sued an employee who went to OpenAI for trade secret theft: https://winbuzzer.com/2025/09/01/xai-sues-former-engineer-al...

    xAI argues the stolen data contains “cutting-edge AI technologies with features superior to those offered by ChatGPT”. The company claims this information could provide OpenAI with a “potential overwhelming edge in the race to dominate the AI landscape”.

This has to be a joke. The also-ran accusing the market leader. Specially when some of what xAI has achieved was stolen from Google.

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

#572

Post by aftergibson » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:32 AM UTC

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…

Okay, yup, this line of reasoning has me removing agents from my personal machines. I was enjoying the convenience and waved that internal niggle away with a vague feeling of "they would never exploit this", but you're right, I needed that wake up call.

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

#573

Post by swiftcoder » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:33 AM UTC

inlined wrote: post #438

sqquima wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the new version of this is using your work's LLM account (potentially more powerful) to do personal work

That seems absolutely crazy to do. One could argue that the marginal cost to work for using a work laptop is zero and the work is still yours (still beyond the risk I’m willing to take). Using a company’s AI account is literally using the company’s resources for a personal project. There is no plausible case where they don’t own it.

> Using a company’s AI account is literally using the company’s resources for a personal project. There is no plausible case where they don’t own it.

Honestly, of the two scenarios, this one is the more likely to fall on the employee's side.

We haven't really tested the legal precedent for ownership of LLM outputs very thoroughly yet, and I'm willing to bet a bunch of us still have employment contracts that haven't been updated to cover LLM use...

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

#574

Post by notenlish » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:33 AM UTC

throw1234567891 wrote: post #555

hhh wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it obvious? We have strong legal agreements that state otherwise, do you think they are just lying and risking thousands of lawsuits? I think it's more likely that there are 3/4 of a billion users that don't have these agreements and just pay for ChatGPT Plus and don't opt-out of anything, and are feeding the scaling machine every day.

ChatGPT has 3 to 4 billion paying users? And still haven’t turned a profit?

They said 3 quarters of a billion

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

#575

Post by jchw » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:35 AM UTC

mhdi_kr99 wrote: post #562

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple is a company built on anti trust violations[1]. Every company that sees it profitable to break the law and pay a fine seems to do it. There are no “good guys”. [1] https://www.theverge.com/apple/659296/apple-failed-complianc...

steam/valve are good guys

Even Valve has its sins with questionable monetization, alleged anti-competitive practices, and of course DRM, it's just, for their size it's challenging to find companies that aren't much worse for these bullet points.

Still, a rare exception of a company that seems worth the openness of one's mind. It's pretty shameful that this alone is worthy of praise, even forgetting the things Valve does that are just generally positive.

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

#576

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:35 AM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #535

palmotea wrote: post #490

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. $95k does not seems like enough money to totally upend your life like that for.

> $95k does not seems like enough money to totally upend your life like that for. That's because most of us here are so used to the amount of money we earn. But for people who literally struggling with month-to-month payments, 100K feels like a life-changing amount of money. If they were just saving month by month, they might have never reached that amount in their entire life. Our perspectives here on HN are very on…

[deleted]

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

#577

Post by swiftcoder » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:36 AM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #570

swiftcoder wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, the very same comment mentions that the person was earning 6 figures. Less-than-a-year's-salary is definitely a weird thing to throw a comfortable 6 figure income out the window for - it's not like 95k is "never work a day in your life" money.

> I don't know, the very same comment mentions that the person was earning 6 figures. What does that mean for where and how the person live though? How much money were they realistically having left at the end of the month? 6 figures surely means a lot in some places, in others not so much and maybe they didn't have much left after all. Even with 1K left in a month on average, that's 95 months (~8 years) of saving fo…

> What does that mean for where and how the person live though?

It means they lived somewhere where a 6-figure income is feasible, which already puts it on the expensive end of the spectrum. If they are fleeing to somewhere where 95k looks like retirement money, that's not going to be a place where replacing that 6-figure income is feasible (especially with a default judgement against them blocking access to the whole US-influenced banking network)

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

#578

Post by hahahaa » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:36 AM UTC

mixdup wrote: post #60

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not one to defend huge companies, but OpenAI is a huge company. It’s possible this kind of behavior is endorsed throughout, or it’s possible it’s limited to this specific group. We know nothing beyond what Apple has alleged.

You think the group tasked with developing whatever hardware device they're trying to build is isolated away from senior leadership and is running rogue?

Why not? It may be the old plausable denable thing. Like so many examples. Pressure from the top but no instruction to do $badthing.

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

#579

Post by Closi » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:37 AM UTC

mhdi_kr99 wrote: post #562

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple is a company built on anti trust violations[1]. Every company that sees it profitable to break the law and pay a fine seems to do it. There are no “good guys”. [1] https://www.theverge.com/apple/659296/apple-failed-complianc...

steam/valve are good guys

I'm not sure on that:

1) Lots of people think they are partly complicit in all the skins trading/gambling that children do, which is basically skirting gambling laws. This has culminated in a current lawsuit in New York which claims they broke gambling laws.

2) They also currently have a large antitrust lawsuit going on, due to them requiring Most Favored Nation pricing while setting a 30% commission fee vs 12% on competitor platforms, which exploits market position and artificially raises game prices to Steam's benefit.

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

#580

Post by DrBazza » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:39 AM UTC

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…

> Apple have deep enough pockets that they can actually sue OpenAI but I bet OpenAI are surprised they got caught.

Maybe? But more likely their 'surprise' will be that it's actually happened, because the people doing this kind of thing must surely know it's wrong and won't be telling their bosses, and/or their bosses definitely won't be passing that info up the chain. Just like movies, 'plausible deniability'.