Apple asked a federal judge on Tuesday for an immediate order barring OpenAI from using trade secrets it says the ChatGPT maker stole, escalating a lawsuit that has become one of the most closely watched legal fights in the AI industry.
In a motion filed in federal court, Apple asked the judge to order OpenAI to return all confidential information and to stop any attempt to obtain other non-public information, with the order to remain in effect for the duration of the litigation. “If Apple’s trade secrets are used and disseminated by OpenAI, or embedded in its products and operations, the harm will be irreparable,” Apple’s lawyers wrote.
The injunction request is the latest move in a dispute that began when Apple accused OpenAI of orchestrating the theft of information about its unreleased products through a coordinated hiring campaign. OpenAI, which filed its own motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Wednesday, says Apple’s complaint is baseless and that its employees were doing what any hardware company does: recruiting, and helping former colleagues who asked for help.
Preliminary injunctions are hard to get. Courts require the moving party to show a likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm, a balance of hardships in its favor and alignment with the public interest. Trade-secret cases, where the harm is by definition hard to quantify, are a common battleground, and judges often split the difference: they order preservation of evidence and bar use of specific documents, but stop short of freezing a rival’s operations. Apple is asking for the strong version, a full stop on OpenAI’s use of the disputed information for the life of the case.
The practical effect of the motion may matter more than its outcome. An injunction fight forces both sides to identify the secrets at issue early, and that identification defines the discovery that follows. “The injunction motion is where Apple has to show its cards,” said one lawyer who has handled trade-secret disputes. The list of documents Apple claims are protected, and OpenAI’s response to each, will shape the case for years.
The dispute sits on top of a deeper rivalry. Apple and OpenAI are intertwined in the AI market, with Apple at one point integrating ChatGPT into its devices, but the relationship has cooled as Apple pushes its own AI strategy and both companies compete for the same engineers. The talent market for AI specialists is among the tightest in technology, and poaching allegations are common; lawsuits are not. Cases that reach the trade-secret stage are rare because the evidence is hard to obtain, and the Waymo case against Uber, which accused the ride-hailing company of stealing self-driving technology, ended in a settlement after years of litigation rather than a verdict.
For OpenAI, an injunction would be an operational problem. A court order barring it from using certain information, even a narrow one, would force the company to isolate employees, quarantine documents and certify compliance, a distraction at a moment when it is preparing for what is expected to be one of the largest technology listings in years. For Apple, the case is also a statement of intent, a signal that it will defend its AI ambitions in court as well as in the market.
The two motions now pending, Apple’s injunction request and OpenAI’s dismissal bid, will be resolved in the coming months, and the rulings will determine how the case proceeds. A dismissal would end it; a denied injunction would send it into discovery, where the engineers whose chats are at the center of the dispute will be deposed and both companies will open their hiring practices to scrutiny. Either way, the fight has already accomplished something: it has made every AI company’s recruiting practices fair game, and it has put a price on the talent wars that have defined the industry’s most competitive years.
The case also lands in a moment of unusual sensitivity for Apple’s AI ambitions. The company has been slower than its rivals to ship generative AI features, and its products have been criticized for trailing the market in the very capabilities the lawsuit concerns. Apple has answered with a series of announcements this year, and its engineers have been working to integrate AI across its devices. A lawsuit that turns on whether its competitors stole its AI plans is, in that light, also a statement about what those plans are worth.
Discovery, if it comes, will be expensive for both sides. Trade-secret litigation routinely runs for years, produces tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and leaves both companies’ internal communications exposed to public filing. The stakes for OpenAI are compounded by its pending listing plans, which will require it to disclose financial details while the case is pending. For Apple, the costs are a price it appears willing to pay to establish that its research is protected.
