OpenAI has published a blog post titled "Apple is getting this wrong" responding to Apple's trade secrets lawsuit, calling the litigation "careless, aggressive, and oddly personal" The Verge. The post, published on August 3, 2026, at https://openai.com/index/apple-is-getting-this-wrong/, comes as Apple asks a court to block two former employees from using information Apple says belongs to them OpenAI.

Apple's lawsuit centers on Chang Liu and Tang Tan, both former Apple employees who have since joined OpenAI The Verge. Liu was an iPhone engineer at Apple and now works on OpenAI's technical team. Tan spent 25 years at Apple, overseeing iPhone and Apple Watch design, before becoming OpenAI's chief hardware officer.

Apple alleges that Liu and Tan took confidential information about unreleased Apple technologies, processes, and products to advance OpenAI's hardware plans. On August 4, 2026, Apple asked the court for a preliminary injunction — a temporary order that would stop Liu, Tan, and OpenAI from accessing, using, or sharing the alleged confidential information while the lawsuit proceeds.

The filing details specific allegations against Liu. Apple claims he failed to return a company-owned computer and used a security flaw to access Apple's online storage weeks after leaving the company. Think of it like keeping your keycard to a building after you quit, and the company forgetting to deactivate it. Apple further alleges that Liu downloaded confidential files and taught another Apple colleague how to do the same without being caught by Apple's security team.

Tan faces separate allegations. Apple claims he asked for confidential Apple information when interviewing Apple employees for jobs at OpenAI and told candidates to show off Apple components they had worked on.

OpenAI's rebuttal addresses each point. The company stated that Apple's request is "based on false information and completely unnecessary" because OpenAI does not have or want Apple's trade secrets OpenAI. Regarding Liu, OpenAI said Apple employees reached out to Liu for help finding information and that Apple failed to properly manage system access for former employees. OpenAI said Tan "has always been clear with the team that we do not want, and must not use, any confidential information from other companies."

OpenAI also refuted Apple's claim that it ignored Apple's initial messages. According to OpenAI, Apple's lawyers emailed the wrong person after mixing up two Asian last names. To back this up, OpenAI published the actual emails between the two companies' lawyers directly in its blog post.

The publication of internal legal correspondence is an aggressive move. Trade secrets disputes between large technology companies are normally handled quietly, through sealed court filings and private negotiations. By publishing the emails and framing Apple's claims as personal, OpenAI has taken its legal defense into the public eye.

The allegations around Liu point to a technical security problem that will sound familiar to anyone who has worked in corporate IT. Apple's claim that Liu used a security flaw to access online storage weeks after leaving suggests gaps in offboarding — the process of cutting off a departing employee's access to company systems. OpenAI's counter-narrative, which blames Apple for failing to manage system access and says Apple employees asked Liu for help finding information, suggests the access was not malicious. Sorting out that disagreement will likely require detailed computer logs showing who logged in, when, and what they accessed.

The allegations against Tan raise a different set of concerns. If accurate, asking job candidates to reveal details about proprietary components during interviews would be a new way to get hold of another company's intellectual property. OpenAI's flat denial, based on a stated company policy against using confidential information from other companies, sets up a factual dispute that will depend on witness testimony and any records from those interviews.

The bigger picture here is the ongoing tension between people changing jobs and companies protecting their ideas. As AI companies move into building hardware, they need experienced consumer electronics engineers, which puts them in direct competition with companies like Apple. When a senior hardware leader like Tan moves from Apple to OpenAI, his knowledge goes with him — and that inevitably leads to legal fights over what knowledge is a company secret and what is just general industry experience.

The court's decision on Apple's August 4 injunction request will be the first real test of who has the stronger case. If granted, it would block Liu, Tan, and OpenAI from accessing or using the contested information during the lawsuit. If denied, Apple loses some of its leverage in any future settlement talks.

OpenAI's choice to fight this dispute in public, with published source materials, points to a deliberate communications strategy. Whether that approach helps or hurts the legal defense is an open question. The core questions — what was accessed, why, and with what permission — will now be decided in court.