Apple says an ex-engineer walked off with its hardware files. OpenAI wants the case thrown out
Apple has asked a California court for early discovery against two OpenAI staff, claiming new evidence about unannounced products. OpenAI's answer, filed 6 August, calls the suit rotten at the root.
OpenAI has answered, and answered hard. On 6 August it asked a California court to throw out Apple’s trade-secrets suit in full, calling the case rotten at the root. Pulling the other way in the same docket, Apple asked for early production of evidence involving two OpenAI employees, senior systems engineer Chang Liu and hardware director Tang Yew Tan, saying it has gathered fresh indications that proprietary information about unannounced products was misused.
What the complaint actually says
The object at the centre of it is not an algorithm or a chip. It is a work laptop that, Apple says, never came back. We covered the suit when it was filed on 10 July. Apple filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, against OpenAI and two former Apple employees. One is Chang Liu, a senior electrical systems engineer who moved to OpenAI’s technical staff early in 2026. Apple alleges Liu kept his company laptop when he left, then exploited a flaw in an authentication system to get back onto the internal network and download dozens of confidential hardware files. The complaint also claims that, while trying to recruit a colleague to OpenAI, Liu offered advice on copying files without attracting the security team.
What the two filings mean
Neither of them settles anything. What they do is stake out the ground: Apple wants a documented trade-secrets case built before trial, and OpenAI wants the court never to get there.
Why this matters outside the courtroom
Because both companies are walking toward the same place. OpenAI spent 6.5 billion dollars buying io, the largest acquisition in its history, precisely to build consumer hardware with AI inside it. Whatever device it ships next will land in the category Apple invented.
Trade-secret fights between companies this size rarely end in a dramatic verdict. They end in settlements, narrow injunctions and hiring clauses. But they slow launches and chill recruiting on both sides while they run, and that is the part that shows up in products.
For Apple it is one more open front in a busy summer, weeks after it pulled Telegram from the App Store worldwide. Public docket records sit with the Northern District of California.
By Oliver Grant
Photo: Warren LeMay / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)
