Can an Apple lawsuit derail OpenAI’s hardware plans?
Apple recently filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the AI company of a pattern of misconduct aimed at getting current and former Apple...
Key points
- Apple recently filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the AI company of a pattern of misconduct aimed at getting current and former Apple employees to share confidential information.
- (In response, OpenAI said it is “not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit.”) On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I debated whether this lawsuit will cast a shadow over OpenAI’s much-discussed plans to get into the hardware business (starting with a mobile smart speaker) and go public.
- “Even setting aside whether or not the court grants any kind of injunctive relief or any kind of restraining order over what OpenAI is doing, it just naturally can lead to that sort of situation where it’s going to cause some delays in what OpenAI is working on,” Sean suggested.
- This is all important because Apple is accusing OpenAI of essentially stealing their trade secrets, but in the context of that, this could be then used for a competing hardware product.
What happened
Apple recently filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the AI company of a pattern of misconduct aimed at getting current and former Apple employees to share confidential information. (In response, OpenAI said it is “not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit.”) On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I debated whether this lawsuit will cast a shadow over OpenAI’s much-discussed plans to get into the hardware business (starting with a mobile smart speaker) and go public. “Even setting aside whether or not the court grants any kind of injunctive relief or any kind of restraining order over what OpenAI is doing, it just naturally can lead to that sort of situation where it’s going to cause some delays in what OpenAI is working on,” Sean suggested. This is all important because Apple is accusing OpenAI of essentially stealing their trade secrets, but in the context of that, this could be then used for a competing hardware product. Even setting aside whether or not the court grants any kind of injunctive relief or any kind of restraining order over what OpenAI is doing, it just naturally can lead to that sort...