Sarah Perez (Hacker News):
Apple is now seeking a preliminary injunction in its trade secrets case against OpenAI, which aims to stop the AI model maker from moving forward with developing an AI device or other products based on Apple’s technology. […] In a new filing, Apple is requesting expedited discovery from the accused OpenAI employees, senior systems engineer Chang Liu and Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan; OpenAI, and its foundation; and io, the device startup co-founded by Apple’s former lead designer Jony Ive.
OpenAI (Hacker News, ArsTechnica, The Verge, MacRumors, 9To5Mac):
Apple had claimed that they contacted OpenAI in February and that we didn’t respond. They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention. Apple also claimed they had a discussion with our General Counsel, which they now concede never happened. But they again hide the fact that they never raised the specific allegations in this lawsuit at that time, and that they in fact told us that they were “resolving any issues”. We then heard nothing for five months until they sued. In their latest filing, Apple tries hard to spin this sequence of events, but you can just read the emails for yourself here.
Apple accuses Chang Liu of accessing Apple confidential information after leaving the company, but only now admits that Apple employees reached out to him and asked for his help to locate this information (you can read the messages here). Apple now tries to shift the blame to “residual access”, but they also don’t disclose that this is a common issue with Apple which is caused by them failing to properly manage system access when people leave. What that means in practice is that former employees who are trying to do the right thing when they leave still have access to Apple files—despite not wanting them or even being aware of them.
William Gallagher:
What it does not even touch is the accusation that Chang Liu retained his Apple laptop, which seems to be proven by what OpenAI posted. Apple further says that Liu entered shared network folders after leaving the company, and did so to download dozens of confidential files.
Then, too, OpenAI ignores the specific further accusation that ex-Apple employee Tang Tan both emailed documents to himself and sought trade secrets from employees he was recruiting for the ChatGPT company.
asimpletune:
What really matters is the claim that Apple never raised those issues in the lawsuit with them. OpenAI claims the emails prove this, but to me all the emails prove is Apple sent an email that said “please see the attached letters”. We don’t know what is in the attachments but I imagine those were the relevant issues they raised.
[…]
The fact that the lawyer emailed the wrong person is moot if they caught it and resolved it days later.
Previously:
Apple Lawsuit Legal OpenAI
Juli Clover:
The way Apple combines work and personal iCloud accounts left some employees able to access confidential documents after departing the company, reports The Information. The site spoke to more than half a dozen former Apple employees who were unknowingly left with access to sensitive content.
[…]
Apple told The Information that the OpenAI lawsuit is unrelated to any files left available on iCloud and that it does not pursue legal claims against former employees who accidentally have Apple documents in their personal iCloud accounts.
[…]
In a now-settled legal dispute, chip company Rivos claimed Apple intentionally lets former employees retain access to files “as part of a planned effort to generate a pretextual basis to sue the employees and their new employer for ‘stealing’ Apple material.” In the Rivos case, an employee was targeted for keeping work files in his personal iCloud account.
Andrew Orr:
The documents included confidential material such as plans for product launch events. The former employees said they made no effort to retain access and unexpectedly found the files mixed with their personal iCloud data.
The problem reportedly grew from Apple’s practice of encouraging employees to connect their personal Apple IDs to company-funded iCloud storage.
[…]
Apple also relied heavily on iMessage for workplace conversations and file sharing before rolling out Slack around 2019. Former employees could retain old iMessage conversations and attachments, while Apple could terminate their Slack access when they left.
John Gruber (Mastodon):
If you use your personal Apple ID, you get a magic “Apple Work” folder in iCloud Drive. When you leave Apple, that “Apple Work” folder disappears. But any other files or folders that were shared with you that were outside that magic folder are still in your iCloud Drive, because it’s still your personal iCloud account.
[…]
You still have the same Apple ID account, even though you no longer have an employee @apple.com email account. Overall, this is a humane way of dealing with digital identity. Your Apple ID account is you, the person, not “example@icloud.com”, one specific unique email address. And you, the person, may well have multiple email addresses — all of which can be associated with your one Apple ID account. That makes Apple IDs more nuanced and complicated than a simple mapping of one email address = one account. And it obviously makes access restrictions more complicated.
Yesterday, OpenAI released messages to show that Apple employees (with permission) retained access to the departing employee’s personal iCloud account so that they could access work files that were stored there. It’s just a mess that both the software and corporate policy encourage mixing everything in one account.
Eric Schwarz:
As many things I know about Apple, this whole thing both makes perfect sense and feels absolutely bonkers.
Previously:
Apple Apple ID iCloud iMessage Lawsuit Legal Mac macOS Tahoe 26 OpenAI Working
Ryan Merket (Hacker News, PDF):
The company said his performance was the reason, according to a lawsuit Boardman filed in San Francisco Superior Court. Boardman says that explanation was a pretext. His version of the story begins three years earlier, inside Apple’s technical relationship with the largest wireless carriers in the United States, with a category of data capable of identifying nearly every phone on the network.
[…]
Apple considered serial numbers and IMEIs personally identifiable information under its internal policies, Boardman alleges. Representatives working with carriers other than AT&T required the carrier to obtain a customer release before Apple supplied the data. The Apple representative assigned to AT&T did not enforce that requirement, according to the complaint. Boardman says the identifiers were then transmitted through “unsecured email communications.”
He reported the practice to his manager and sought guidance from Apple’s legal department. He alleges that the company never gave him a written response.
I don’t think he has much of a legal case. Apple was probably within its rights to fire him if what he refused to do was against company policy but not illegal. It doesn’t sound like Apple is disputing that, at least not yet.
However, I think this is interesting because:
This seems to be another case, like yesterday’s story, where the interests of the customer and the carrier are at odds, and Apple leans towards the latter.
It shows that a policy is no guarantee, because it depends on humans choosing to follow it. There are other cases where Apple has been able to engineer privacy into the system. But some data is not end-to-end encrypted, so consent is a formal but a not technical requirement.
Previously:
Apple AT&T Carrier Firing iPhone Lawsuit Legal Privacy
