正文 · AI 翻译
IT Home reported on October 6 that, a few days earlier, OpenAI accused Apple of improperly submitting new evidence in a trade secrets lawsuit. Apple has now responded by accusing OpenAI of exceeding the scope permitted by court rules in its response.
According to IT Home, Apple brought the lawsuit against two former employees, Chang Liu and Tang Tan, as well as OpenAI and io Products, alleging misappropriation of trade secrets. One of Apple's central requests in the case is for a preliminary injunction.
In short, Apple has asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction. Apple argues that, while the case is being heard, it needs to prevent its trade secrets from becoming further incorporated into OpenAI's hardware development work.
During several rounds of legal exchanges over the injunction request, Apple filed a reply brief supported by five written expert declarations. Several defendants then accused Apple of improperly introducing new evidence and asked the court to disregard some of the materials.
While OpenAI and the other defendants filed objections accusing Apple of submitting new evidence, they also filed several documents rebutting Apple's arguments.
Today, Apple filed a response to the defendants' objections. Apple argued that the defendants went beyond objecting to new evidence and instead introduced several new arguments and declarations of their own:
Court Rule 7-3(d)(1) allows a party to object to new evidence appearing in a reply brief, but also states that the objection filing “may not include further argument on the motion.” The defendants did not comply with this restriction and instead used their objections to argue again about the merits of Apple's request for a preliminary injunction.
For example, the defendants questioned “whether Dr. Runge had a basis for conducting his analysis, whether he adequately addressed ‘contrary evidence,’ and whether he established that some of Apple's information had not been publicly disclosed. […] Such arguments are not objections to new evidence. […] (‘Arguments that some of the plaintiff's positions lack evidentiary support or conflict with other testimony’ are not evidentiary objections.)”
Apple also strongly objected to a new written declaration submitted by Chang Liu, calling it “the most serious overreach” among the defendants' filings:
The most serious overreach comes from Mr. Liu's entirely new written declaration, which contains eight paragraphs of new testimony. The defendants use this new testimony to try to explain why Mr. Liu “erased” all the data on his iMac before returning it to Apple; to argue about the meaning of certain text messages between him and an Apple supplier; and to try to justify his prior use of a confidential Apple computer file. […] Such testimony violates the rule against “further argument on the motion.” The objections and this declaration together run to 9 pages, also violating the 5-page limit on the “body” of an objection filing. […]
Notably, when the defendants originally submitted Liu's written declaration, they said they wanted the court to review it only if the court decided to consider the Apple evidence they had challenged.
Even so, Apple argues that, because the defendants have now submitted new arguments and evidence of their own, the court should review the entire record and should not exclude any evidence from Apple's reply brief:
The defendants' new arguments and evidence are more like a “sur-reply brief” than evidentiary objections. But the defendants did not first seek the court's permission to file a sur-reply brief. Nevertheless, because the defendants have now fully responded in this filing to all the purported “new evidence” in Apple's reply brief, the court should deny their request to exclude Apple's reply evidence and decide the preliminary injunction request on the full record. That record should include the arguments and evidence in Apple's reply brief, as well as the new arguments and evidence improperly submitted by the defendants in this filing.
The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Apple's request for a preliminary injunction on October 14.