New Delhi, July 20 -- SAN FRANCISCO - The text message read almost like a prank. "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage]." The engineer who typed it had just left Apple for OpenAI, and the court filing the company submitted last month claims he had not yet lost access to his former employer's internal systems, and had not been asked to.

That line is the sharpest in a 41-page complaint Apple filed July 13 against OpenAI, accusing it of running what the company calls a "pattern of misconduct" to move confidential designs from Cupertino into OpenAI's new hardware division. The more quietly significant detail, though, is what the complaint omits. Jony Ive is not named in it.

That choice is unlikely to be an oversight.

Ive left...