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Apple Sends Legal Letters To Dozens of OpenAI Employees (macrumors.com) 14

Posted by BeauHD from the get-your-popcorn-ready dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple has reportedly sent legal letters to dozens of former Apple employees now working at OpenAI, telling them to preserve potentially relevant documents and communications as it continues to pursue its trade secret lawsuit against the AI company. The Financial Times (paywalled) reports that Apple has targeted around 40 former employees with legal preservation letters, acting on its belief that the alleged misappropriation of confidential information may extend beyond the individuals named in its original complaint.

The development follows Apple's lawsuit filed last week against OpenAI, in which the company alleges a coordinated effort to obtain confidential information relating to its hardware engineering and product development. Apple claims OpenAI recruited key engineers, including former Apple executives Tang Tan and Chang Liu, and benefited from proprietary designs, manufacturing processes, and other trade secrets. Tan is OpenAI's Chief Hardware Officer and a 24-year Apple veteran who led product design, while Liu is on the hardware team at OpenAI after working as a senior system electrical engineer at Apple.

Apple Sends Legal Letters To Dozens of OpenAI Employees More | Reply

Apple Sends Legal Letters To Dozens of OpenAI Employees

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  • Doesn't IT keep the back ups or do they also use old fashioned notebooks and pens?

    • Retention policy for IT departments in the corporate world is that no, you don't keep backups unless you receive a legal notice.

    • Doesn't IT keep the back ups or do they also use old fashioned notebooks and pens?

      Unfortunately, it's complicated.

      For large companies, yes, there are enough lawsuits all the time that retention rules are to keep everything.

      For small companies and individuals, generally there are minimal retention policies in place. That's the big reason for sending out the notices, so they have legal notice not to delete anything that might be evidence in the lawsuit. Even if they casually or unwittingly deleted it before, they're on notice now to preserve it.

      The allegations are pretty serious, and d

  • by Open AI, and if they don't do it, they will be fired?

    Seems the employee would be between a rock and a hard place.

    I think the employee would have no safe option other than be fired (in order to collect unemployment) in this case, which could have adverse impact on the employees finances.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      I'm not an AI lawyer, but isn't it a legal requirement to not delete documents that may be related to a court case once you're informed that you may have documents related to a court case? If so, they could end up in court themselves if they do delete them and aren't friends of powerful political figures who will protect them.

      • If you're deleting any information you think might be requested later as part of a legal case, that is destroying evidence.

    • And that would be wrongful termination by Open AI. And it could potentially violate a legal order. And it could be spoliation of evidence. So potentially multi ways to amplify one's legal liability. So no, nobody is going to get fired for following the legal notice.

      Generally, the best thing to do is bring those notices to your employer's legal team. And let them deal with it. Get the company to own all decisions and avoid taking on the company's liability as your own.

      • No, you give it to HR. That way there's no question whether you were seeking legal advice. Preferably with a cover letter that says you're preserving all of your personal electronic communications and are prepared to produce all of them on receipt of a subpoena, due to your concern that there may be merit to the claims in the lawsuit. Such letter, of course, being discoverable as internal corporate documents rather than involving privileged legal communications... let me know how much paid leave you end up

        • Sure. do whatever you were told to do. At one company (+15 years ago) I gave the nasty letters Amazon sent me to the HR director. She basically told me it was garbage and I could have thrown it in the trash, but she'll file them and to tell her if I get any more.
          At my last two companies, I'm supposed to send everything onto the legal department. That's subtly different than talking with an attorney, at best my email is filtered through a paralegal. Again, different companies have different policies.

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