A simple email error has been enough to sink negotiation attempts between Apple and OpenAI and trigger a lawsuit over theft of trade secrets. According to hipertextual.com, citing NBC News, the incident occurred months ago when an external lawyer for the Cupertino company confused the recipients of a message containing serious accusations against Sam Altman's company. What could have been an easily resolved misunderstanding completely poisoned relations between the two tech giants.

The Email That Changed Everything

Gabriel Gross, external counsel for Apple at law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, sent an email to Che Chang, OpenAI's legal adviser, with the subject "Former Apple Employees at OpenAI Retain Non-Public, Confidential and Proprietary Information". The message included documentation supporting Apple's accusations against OpenAI.

The problem came thirteen minutes later. Gross sent a second email to Chang thanking him for a phone call they had supposedly had during that interval. The reality was quite different: that conversation never took place with Chang. Apple's lawyer had actually spoken with a person with the surname Wang, who had offered "rapid cooperation". Wang was none other than a former Apple employee now working at OpenAI, who had accidentally replied to the wrong email thread.

The Misunderstanding That Closed All Doors

When Chang received the second email, in which Gross referenced a conversation that had never taken place with him, he interpreted it as Apple fabricating evidence to strengthen its case. The reaction was immediate: Chang contacted two internal Apple lawyers and accused Gross of deliberately lying about a non-existent call.

Although Gross apologised to Chang, the damage was irreversible. Dialogue attempts ceased abruptly. OpenAI received no further contact from Apple's lawyers until the previous Friday, when the company formally filed the lawsuit in a U.S. federal court. What could have been behind-the-scenes negotiations ended up becoming a public legal battle.

The Specific Accusations Against OpenAI

Apple accuses OpenAI, io Products and two specific former employees: Chang Liu and Tang Tan. The accusations include theft of trade secrets and unauthorised transfer of confidential information.

• Tang Tan, former vice president of product design at Apple, allegedly used his knowledge of confidential projects to pressure candidates during job interviews. According to the lawsuit, he even requested actual hardware pieces.
• Chang Liu, who worked as a systems electrical engineer at Apple, is accused of exploiting a security flaw to download confidential files. Apple claims that Liu even joked about the discovery in internal messages and took away a compilation of more than one thousand pages of manufacturing technical documentation, circuit board details and other sensitive information.

What Is Apple Asking for Now?

The lawsuit demands that OpenAI cease its practices and destroy any confidential Apple material. Additionally, the Cupertino company is requesting that it redesign its upcoming products to ensure they do not include any of the technology it accuses OpenAI of stealing.

The case illustrates an increasingly frequent reality in the technology sector: the migration of employees with access to sensitive information between direct competitors generates complex legal tensions. The irony is that in this case, everything was accelerated not by what a former employee did, but by a simple error in the recipient line of an email. A lesson in how small details in corporate communication can have colossal consequences.