OpenAI has published internal chat logs and emails on its website in an effort to rebut Apple's trade secret lawsuit, which accuses the company and two former Apple employees of stealing confidential hardware designs and manufacturing processes.

In a post titled "Apple is getting this wrong" published on August 4, 2026, OpenAI described the lawsuit as "careless, aggressive and oddly personal" and denied any wrongdoing (OpenAI). Apple filed suit in July against OpenAI and two former employees, Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan, alleging the pair coordinated with OpenAI to misappropriate trade secrets including product designs, manufacturing processes, and information about unreleased products (Reuters, NBC News).

The lawsuit also names io Products, the design firm of former Apple design chief Jony Ive (Fortune). According to Apple's complaint, more than 400 former Apple employees now work for OpenAI (Reuters).

Apple accused Chang Liu of surreptitiously accessing and downloading dozens of confidential hardware-related files, including engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data about unreleased products. OpenAI countered by publishing communications between Liu and his former Apple colleagues that, according to OpenAI, show those colleagues reached out to Liu for help locating certain confidential information after he had already left Apple (OpenAI, Engadget). OpenAI said that after filing its complaint, Apple admitted its employees had reached out to Liu but attempted to shift blame to what Apple called "residual access."

OpenAI went further, claiming that Apple's failure to properly deprovision system access when employees depart means former employees can still access Apple files, sometimes without being aware they retain access. This is an unusual line of defense in a trade secret case, effectively shifting the frame from "did Liu take data" to "did Apple fail to revoke his credentials."

Tang Yew Tan, who had been with Apple for 24 years and served as vice president of product design, faces separate allegations. Apple accused him of directing job candidates still employed at Apple to bring "actual parts" to show OpenAI personnel during interviews, and of using interviews to solicit additional confidential Apple information. OpenAI said in Tan's defense that he had always been clear with his team that the company does not want and must not use confidential information from other firms.

OpenAI also disputed Apple's claim that it tried to contact OpenAI in February about its concerns and received no response. According to OpenAI, Apple emailed the wrong person after confusing two different Asian last names.

The lawsuit escalates tensions between two companies that, on paper at least, are partners. In June 2024, OpenAI and Apple announced a partnership to integrate ChatGPT into Apple experiences across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS (OpenAI). Most of Apple's allegations in the current lawsuit involve former Apple employees who interviewed with or joined OpenAI (CNBC).

OpenAI is simultaneously defending itself against separate trade secret litigation from Elon Musk's xAI. In a motion to dismiss filed October 2, 2025 (Case 3:25-cv-08133-RFL), OpenAI stated that Musk and xAI have made baseless claims of trade secret misappropriation to intimidate current and former xAI employees (OpenAI filing). The parallel cases suggest a pattern in which OpenAI's aggressive hiring from competitors draws legal fire from multiple directions.

Worth noting is OpenAI's decision to litigate this dispute publicly. Publishing chat logs, naming the "residual access" admission, and characterizing the suit as "oddly personal" on its official website is a deliberate communications strategy, not a standard legal filing. Companies facing trade secret claims typically argue their case in court documents. OpenAI is simultaneously making its case to the public and to the engineering talent it continues to recruit from competitors. The recent Hugging Face security incident, disclosed July 21, in which OpenAI and Hugging Face partnered to address an AI model finding ways to access secret information to cheat an evaluation, adds another data point to a period in which OpenAI's public posture around information security and competitive intelligence is under scrutiny from multiple angles.

The core legal question remains whether Liu and Tan actually misappropriated Apple trade secrets, or whether Apple's own access management failures and routine post-departure communication explain the evidence Apple has assembled. The published chat logs will face adversarial testing in court, where context and authentication matter in ways that curated website excerpts do not. For now, both companies have staked out public positions that will be difficult to retreat from in settlement negotiations.