Apple and OpenAI trade secret litigation escalates: new evidence submitted against each other for violations苹果与 OpenAI 商业秘密诉讼交锋升级：互指违规提交新证据

IT House reported on October 6 that a few days ago, OpenAI accused Apple of illegally submitting new evidence in trade secret litigation. Now Apple is firing back, in turn accusing OpenAI of going beyond what court rules allow in its response. According to IT House, this lawsuit was initiated by Apple and sued two former employees (Chang Liu and Tang Tan), OpenAI and io Products for allegedly misappropriating trade secrets. One of the core demands in the case is to apply for a temporary injunction. Simply put, Apple asked the court to issue a temporary injunction. Apple’s reasoning is that it needs to prevent its trade secrets from being further integrated into OpenAI’s hardware development while the case is pending. During the multiple rounds of legal battles surrounding the injunction application, Apple submitted a defensive legal opinion supported by five expert written testimonies. This move immediately aroused criticism from several defendants. The defendants believed that Apple had introduced new evidence in violation of regulations and requested the court not to admit some materials. OpenAI, along with the other defendants, filed objections and accused Apple of submitting new evidence. They also submitted several documents to refute Apple's claims. Today, Apple submitted a response document to the defendant’s objection. Apple pointed out that the defendant did not stop at raising objections to the new evidence, but instead added a number of new claims and testimony of its own: Court Rule 7-3(d)(1) allows Litigation One to raise objections to the new evidence appearing in the defense statement, but also provides a reminder that the objection document "shall not be used for further debate on the motion." The defendant failed to abide by this restriction and instead used this objection document to re-open the debate on the merits of Apple's temporary injunction application itself. For example, the defendants questioned whether Dr. Runge "had the basis for his analysis, adequately responded to 'contrary evidence,' and demonstrated that some of Apple's information had not been disclosed to the public. […] This type of argument does not constitute an objection to new evidence. […] ('An argument that some of the plaintiff's positions lack evidentiary support or are inconsistent with other testimony' does not constitute an evidence objection.") Apple also strongly objected to a new written testimony submitted by Liu Chang, saying that this material was the "most serious overreach" among the documents submitted by the defendant: The most serious overreach came from the new written testimony submitted by Mr. Liu Chang, which contained eight paragraphs of new testimony. The defendants used this new testimony to try to explain why Mr. Liu Chang "erased" all the data on the iMac computer before returning it to Apple; to argue about the meaning of some text messages between him and an Apple supplier; and to try to defend his use of a confidential Apple computer file. […] Such testimony violates a provision prohibiting “continued debate on the motion.” The entire set of objection documents, together with this written testimony, is nine pages long, which also violates the page limit of "the text of an objection document shall not exceed five pages." […] It is worth mentioning that when the defendant originally submitted Liu Chang’s written testimony, it hoped that the court would review this testimony only if the court decided to admit the part of Apple’s evidence that was challenged by the defendant. Even so, Apple maintains that since the defendant has now submitted new arguments and evidence on its own, the court should review all the dossier materials and should not eliminate any evidence in Apple's defense statement: The nature of the defendant's new arguments and evidence is closer to a "re-defense statement" and does not constitute an evidence objection. However, the defendant did not apply to the court for permission to submit a re-defense statement in advance. Nonetheless, given that the defendant has already provided a complete response to all the so-called "new evidence" in Apple's defense statement in the documents submitted this time, the court should reject the defendant's application to exclude Apple's defense evidence and rule on the application for a temporary injunction based on the complete dossier. The dossier should also include the arguments and evidence in Apple's defense statement, as well as the new arguments and evidence submitted by the defendant in violation of regulations. The court is scheduled to hold oral arguments on Apple's application for a temporary injunction on October 14.