IT之家 News on 10/6: A few days ago, OpenAI accused Apple of improperly submitting new evidence in a trade secrets lawsuit. Now Apple has struck back, in turn accusing OpenAI of exceeding what court rules allow in its submitted response.
According to IT之家, the lawsuit was initiated by Apple, suing two former employees (Chang Liu, Tang Tan), OpenAI, and io Products for alleged misappropriation of trade secrets. One of the core requests in the case is an application for a preliminary injunction.
Put simply, Apple is asking the court to issue a preliminary injunction. Apple's reasoning is that during the pendency of the case, it needs to prevent its trade secrets from being further incorporated into OpenAI's hardware development work.
In the course of multiple rounds of legal sparring over this injunction application, Apple submitted a reply legal brief, accompanied by five expert written testimonies as support. This move immediately drew criticism from several of the defendants, who argued that Apple had improperly introduced new evidence and asked the court not to admit some of the materials.
OpenAI, together with the other defendants, in filing their objection accusing Apple of submitting new evidence, also submitted several documents to rebut Apple's various claims.
Today, Apple submitted a response to the defendants' objection. Apple argued that the defendants did not stop at objecting to new evidence, but instead added numerous new claims and testimonies of their own:
The court's Rule 7‑3 (d)(1) allows the plaintiff to object to new evidence appearing in a reply brief, but it also cautions that the objection "must not further debate the motion." The defendants did not observe this constraint, and instead used the objection filing to re-debate the merits of Apple's preliminary injunction application itself.
For example, the defendants questioned whether Dr. Runge "had a basis for conducting his analysis, adequately responded to 'contrary evidence,' and demonstrated that some of Apple's information has not been made public. […] Such arguments do not constitute objections to new evidence. […] ('Argument that portions of the plaintiff's positions lack evidentiary support or are contradicted by other testimony is not an evidentiary objection.')
Apple also strongly objected to a new written testimony submitted by Chang Liu, calling this material the "most serious transgression" among the defendants' filings:
The most serious transgression comes from the entirely new written declaration submitted by Mr. Chang Liu, which contains eight paragraphs of brand-new testimony. Using this new testimony, the defendants attempt to explain why Mr. Chang Liu "wiped" all of the data on the device before returning the iMac computer to Apple; to argue over the meaning of some of the text messages between him and one of Apple's suppliers; and to justify his having previously used a confidential computer file belonging to Apple. […] Such testimony violates the rules prohibiting "continued debate on the motion." The entire objection filing, together with this written declaration, runs a total of 9 pages, which also violates the page limit for objection filings that the "body must not exceed 5 pages." […]
It is worth noting that when the defendants originally submitted Chang Liu's written declaration, they stated that they wished the court to review the declaration only if the court decided to admit the portion of Apple's evidence that the defendants had challenged.
Even so, Apple argues: since the defendants have now themselves submitted new arguments and evidence, the court should review the complete record rather than strike any of the evidence in Apple's reply brief:
The defendants' newly added arguments and evidence are closer in nature to a "sur-reply brief" than an evidentiary objection. But the defendants did not seek the court's permission in advance to file a sur-reply. Nevertheless, given that the defendants have already fully responded in this filing to all of the allegedly "new evidence" in Apple's reply brief, the court should deny the defendants' request to strike Apple's reply evidence, decide the preliminary injunction application based on the complete record, and the record should include the arguments and evidence in Apple's reply brief as well as the defendants' improperly submitted new arguments and evidence.
The court has scheduled oral arguments on Apple's temporary injunction application for 10/14.