Report: How an email mistake derailed talks between Apple and OpenAI ahead of the lawsuit

NBC News reports that talks between Apple and OpenAI over alleged trade secret theft broke down after an outside lawyer for Apple mistakenly emailed the wrong OpenAI employee and confused their interactions. Here are the details.

Report says Apple’s outside counsel mixed up two email recipients

Last Friday, Apple filed a trade secrets theft lawsuit against OpenIA io Products, and two former employees: Chang Liu and Tang Tan.

In the lawsuit, Apple accuses its former employees of stealing confidential hardware information to advance OpenAI’s consumer-device ambitions.

Apple also alleges that OpenAI failed to respond when the company first raised the issue directly in February:

In February as its investigation was in its early stages, Apple wrote OpenAI to raise its concerns that Apple’s confidential information could be making its way into OpenAI’s business improperly. Apple asked OpenAI to discuss what precautions OpenAI was taking to avoid this problem, to investigate it, and to remediate any issues. OpenAI never responded. This necessitated Apple’s further investigation, revealing the alarming unlawful conduct discussed above.

However, according to NBC News, OpenAI says that it did respond to Apple’s initial outreach, but that communications broke down after an outside lawyer for Apple mistakenly emailed the wrong OpenAI employee and confused him with another person.

According to the report, “Gabriel Gross, [an outside attorney representing Apple] with the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges,” sent an email to Che Chang, OpenAI’s general counsel, with the subject “Former Apple employees at OpenAI retaining non-public, confidential, and proprietary information,” and containing attachments supporting Apple’s accusation.

Then, 13 minutes later, Gross emailed Chang once again, thanking him for a phone call that supposedly took place in the interim and “for offering your cooperation so quickly.”

The problem is that the second email wasn’t intended to Chang, but rather, to “a former Apple employee who had gone to work at OpenAI whose last name is Wang,” says NBC News. Gross had emailed both Chang and Wang moments ago, had spoken with Wang on the phone in the interim, but replied to Chang by mistake.

Believing Gross had emailed him with fabricated information to advance Apple’s case against OpenAI, Chang got in touch with two in-house Apple attorneys, accusing the company’s outside attorney of “lying about speaking with me on the phone,” adding, “I don’t know who he is and we have never spoken.” He then asked Gross to be removed from the case.

Gross later apologized to Chang, while one of Apple’s in-house attorneys told Chang that he could remain in contact with Gross and his law firm as the case moved forward. “The talks appear to have ended there,” says NBC News, adding that OpenAI claims it “has no record of subsequent outreach by Apple’s lawyers until Friday,” when Apple filed its lawsuit.

For NBC News‘ full report, follow this link.

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