OpenAI asks the court to end Apple's trade-secret suit on pleading specificity

The mechanism is narrower than the fight looks from outside. A motion to dismiss takes the complaint's allegations as given and asks whether they add up, which makes this an argument about drafting rather than about what happened in an interview room. OpenAI's new brief lays out the chain it says Apple has to complete: for the same information and the same defendant, what the asserted trade secret is, why that information qualifies for protection, and how that defendant improperly acquired, disclosed, or used it ^[11]. Neither the complaint nor Apple's opposition completes that chain, the brief argues, and the asserted secrets "are and remain vague categories and catch-alls" ^[12]. Because the request is dismissal with prejudice, a win would bar Apple from bringing the same claims again rather than sending it back to redraft ^[1][2].

The passage worth reading twice is the list of inferences OpenAI says Apple wants the court to draw. A request that a candidate bring "parts" becomes assumed receipt of confidential information. Pre-interview downloading becomes assumed disclosure during the interview. A question about an Apple project becomes assumed receipt of trade-secret information ^[14]. Those are recruiting artifacts. Any lab hiring out of a hardware company produces a folder of them in a normal week.

Of the eight argument headings in the brief, seven assert that Apple failed to plead something; the eighth asks the court to take the state law claims down with the federal one ^[15][17]. Where facts do surface, they arrive as alternative explanations rather than denials: OpenAI says Tang Tan kept Apple's offboarding document to help future hires comply with Apple's security requirements ^[8], and that Chang Liu accessed Apple information after leaving because former colleagues asked him for help ^[9]. Apple's response is that the defendants are explaining conduct it never alleged by pointing at unrelated events ^[7].

The people who will feel this ruling first are recruiting coordinators, hiring managers, and the IP teams sitting on the other side of an offer letter. Here is the test that falls out of OpenAI's own three links, applied to a candidate you want from an incumbent. Column one: can the thing you are asking for be named as a specific document, spec, or part, or only as a category? Column two: would that thing plausibly be treated as protected, and did the incumbent take visible steps to protect it? Column three: is there a message, calendar entry, or download log that ties a named person to acquiring it? A complaint that can fill all three columns for the same item survives a motion like this one. A process that generates a Slack line saying bring parts has filled column three for someone else.

The tradeoff is that specificity cuts both ways. Apple's alleged secrets have to be described precisely enough to plead, in a filing the other side reads, and an incumbent that wants a case to live has to accept that cost. If Apple's pleading holds up instead, its expedited discovery request reaches the recruiting correspondence itself ^[5], and the drafting question gets settled without anyone yet deciding whether the conduct occurred. Briefing is closed and the hearing is set for October 1 ^[16].