Sam Altman calls himself a mega Apple fanboy and says the lawsuit made him sad

Sam Altman said he was very sad about Apple’s trade-secrets lawsuit and that his first reaction was that the allegations sounded egregious, while OpenAI has moved to have the case dismissed. California voids non-compete agreements, so an employer losing engineers has to litigate afterwards rather than restrain them in advance.

Sam Altman called himself “a mega Apple fanboy” and said he was “very sad” about Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI, speaking to the journalist Alex Heath. Business Insider reported the interview on Saturday.

The line worth keeping is what came next. “When I first heard about it, I was like, Man, this sounds egregious. Someone must have done something badly.”

He added that OpenAI does not want any company’s intellectual property, and does not want people who would take it and bring it in.

Apple sued in July, alleging a “coordinated pattern of misconduct at an institutional level“. The 40-page complaint names two former Apple employees, Chang Liu and Tang Tan.

TNW reported the allegation that Apple prototypes were carried into show and tell interviews. Apple says the two took or retained confidential information and asked current staff about unannounced products.

Altman is barely mentioned in the complaint himself, which names corporate entities and the two engineers.

OpenAI has asked for the case to be thrown out, arguing it does not state a claim.

So the chief executive of the defendant has publicly called the allegations egregious while his lawyers argue there is nothing to answer. Those are different registers rather than a contradiction, and both are now on the record.

Apple has also asked a court to freeze OpenAI out of its trade secrets through a preliminary injunction. OpenAI’s response is that Apple fears its hardware might reduce demand for Apple’s.

Where the case was filed shapes what it is about. California voids non-compete agreements, so an employer losing engineers to a rival has to litigate afterwards over what they took rather than restrain them in advance.

German law works the other way. A post-contractual non-compete binds for up to two years, but only if the employer pays at least 50% of the employee’s previous average total compensation.

Without that payment the restriction is not binding at all. France also requires financial compensation for a non-compete to hold, and several other member states have similar rules.

Europe prices the restraint in advance, in a contract. California makes the former employer prove the theft afterwards and in public, which is part of why this fight is already slowing the hardware it is about.