NBC News reports that talks between Apple and OpenAI over alleged theft of trade secrets broke down after an outside Apple lawyer mistakenly sent an email to the wrong OpenAI employee and confused their interactions. Here are the details.
Report says Apple’s outside lawyer mixed up two email recipients
Last Friday, Apple filed suit for theft of trade secrets against OpenIA io Products and two former employees: Chang Liu and Tang Tan.
In the lawsuit, Apple accuses its former employees of stealing sensitive hardware information to further OpenAI’s consumer device ambitions.
Apple also alleges that OpenAI did not respond when the company first raised the issue directly in February:
In February, when its investigation was in its early stages, Apple wrote to OpenAI to express concerns that confidential Apple information may be entering OpenAI’s business inappropriately. Apple asked OpenAI to look at what precautions it was taking to avoid this issue, investigate it, and fix any issues. OpenAI never responded. This required additional investigation by Apple, which revealed the alarming illegal conduct discussed above.
However, according to NBC NewsOpenAI says it responded to Apple’s initial contact, but communications broke down after an outside Apple lawyer mistakenly sent an email to the wrong OpenAI employee and mistook him for someone else.
According to the report, “Gabriel Gross, (an outside attorney representing Apple) of the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges,” sent an email to Che Chang, general counsel at OpenAI, with the subject line “Former Apple employees at OpenAI retain non-public, confidential and proprietary information” and containing attachments supporting Apple’s allegation.
Then, 13 minutes later, Gross emailed Chang again, thanking him for a phone call that allegedly took place in the interim and “for offering his cooperation so quickly.”
The problem is that the second email was not addressed to Chang, but to “a former Apple employee who had gone to work at OpenAI whose last name is Wang,” he says. NBC News. Gross had sent an email to Chang and Wang just moments ago, he had spoken to Wang on the phone in the meantime, but he responded to Chang by mistake.
Believing that Gross had sent him an email with fabricated information to advance Apple’s case against OpenAI, Chang contacted two internal Apple lawyers, accusing the company’s outside lawyer of “lying about speaking to me on the phone,” adding, “I don’t know who he is and we’ve never talked.” He then asked that Gross be removed from the case.
Gross later apologized to Chang, while one of Apple’s in-house lawyers told Chang that he could remain in contact with Gross and his law firm as the case progressed. “The conversations seem to have ended there,” he says. NBC Newsadding that OpenAI claims it has “no records of subsequent communications from Apple’s attorneys until Friday,” when Apple filed its lawsuit.
For NBC News‘full report, follow this link.
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