Apple filed new evidence in its trade-secrets lawsuit against OpenAI this week, alleging that former engineer Chang Liu used a confidential Apple circuit schematic in his work at OpenAI and deployed an internal tool that shares a name with an Apple engineering application. The filing follows Liu's legal counsel handing over his old Apple work laptop earlier this month, weeks after Apple first requested it. Apple's initial complaint disclosed that more than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, a hiring pattern the company argues gives the trade-secrets question systemic weight beyond any single engineer.
Apple further alleges that Liu enlisted OpenAI colleague Yu-Ting Peng to help destroy evidence in June 2026, once Liu learned that Apple was investigating him. The company describes the newly surfaced material as "shocking evidence" and argues it justifies both a preliminary injunction against OpenAI's hardware work and expedited discovery to identify other potentially implicated ex-employees. The specifics remain redacted from public view.
The MacBook itself, Apple says, produced only a fraction of what should have been available. In the filing, Apple frames the delayed handover and the limited contents as proof that its case is narrowly targeted rather than speculative.
Key facts
- 01Apple filed new evidence alleging former engineer Chang Liu used a confidential Apple circuit schematic while working at [OpenAI](/openai).
- 02Apple says Liu enlisted OpenAI colleague Yu-Ting Peng to help destroy evidence in June 2026 after learning of the investigation.
- 03More than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, per Apple's initial filing.
- 04Apple is seeking a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI from developing hardware based on its technology.
- 05OpenAI counters that Liu's access resulted from Apple failing to properly revoke system permissions for departing staff.
Past filings have included text messages from Liu, punctuated with "crying laughing" emojis, indicating he was aware he still had access to Apple files after leaving the company. Apple says Liu retained that access because he "exploited a rare, previously unknown authentication bug" — a framing that shifts the story from careless offboarding to deliberate exploitation of a security flaw.
OpenAI has pushed back on that characterization. The company has previously said Liu accessed Apple files only after leaving Apple, at the request of former colleagues who asked for his help. In a blog post earlier this month, OpenAI argued that residual system access after employee departures is a recurring Apple operational failure, not evidence of coordinated theft.
That framing sets up the central factual dispute: whether Liu's continued access reflects a routine Apple IT lapse that he passively benefited from, or an actively exploited authentication bug used to exfiltrate confidential design material. The two theories carry sharply different legal consequences under the Defend Trade Secrets Act.
Apple is seeking a preliminary injunction that would bar OpenAI from developing hardware based on Apple's technology while the litigation proceeds, alongside expedited discovery. The injunction request lands as OpenAI has publicly signaled deeper investment in consumer hardware, including its acquisition last year of Jony Ive's io. Any court order restricting OpenAI's hardware roadmap — even a narrow one — would carry strategic weight far beyond the individual dispute over Liu's laptop.
The expedited discovery request suggests Apple believes the current defendants are not the full universe of implicated employees. With more than 400 former Apple staff at OpenAI, even a small percentage of overlap between Apple's hardware group and OpenAI's device team would produce a substantial pool of potential witnesses and custodians.
OpenAI has not yet responded publicly to the latest allegations regarding the circuit schematic or the June evidence-destruction claim. The company's earlier blog post addressed the residual-access question but predates Apple's newest filing. Until OpenAI files its response, the record on the specific schematic-use allegation is one-sided, and any inference of guilt from that silence would be premature — defendants routinely respond through court filings on their own timeline rather than through press statements.
The dispute will turn on documentary evidence: what was on the MacBook, what OpenAI's own systems logged when Liu allegedly used Apple material, and whether the authentication bug Apple describes can be shown to have been actively exploited rather than passively encountered. Both sides have incentive to resolve the factual record quickly, because the preliminary injunction motion forces a court to weigh the merits early.
For the broader AI industry, this case is the first high-profile trade-secrets fight where the alleged flow of confidential technical material runs from an incumbent hardware giant into a frontier AI lab pursuing its own devices. If Apple secures even a narrow injunction, every AI company hiring from Apple, Google, or Meta hardware teams will face pressure to tighten onboarding review, and every departing engineer's access logs become potential exhibits. The 400-employee figure is what makes this more than a two-defendant case — it defines the scale of the offboarding-hygiene question that OpenAI, and every rival hiring from the same talent pool, now has to answer in court rather than in a blog post.
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