Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence in trade-secrets lawsuit over former engineer

Apple has told a federal court that OpenAI and a former Apple engineer destroyed evidence relevant to its trade-secrets lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker, escalating a case that already accuses OpenAI of building consumer hardware on stolen Apple intellectual property.

What's new

In a court brief filed in support of Apple's motion for expedited discovery, Apple's lawyers say forensic analysis of a company laptop used by former Apple senior electrical engineer Chang Liu shows he downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic and an internal Apple engineering tool, then used both in his work at OpenAI. According to TechCrunch's review of the filing, "Liu used a confidential Apple circuit schematic in his work at OpenAI," and Apple alleges "Liu enlisted OpenAI colleague Yu-Ting Peng to help destroy evidence" after learning he was under internal investigation. Apple says the laptop was only recently turned over by OpenAI, and that by the time it arrived, evidence had already been wiped.

Apple's suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names OpenAI along with Liu and a second former Apple employee, Tang Yew Tan, and accuses OpenAI of using stolen Apple hardware IP to pursue its own consumer devices. The company is now seeking a preliminary injunction to block that hardware work and asking the court to fast-track discovery given the evidence-destruction allegations. Judge Edward J. Davila is scheduled to hear arguments on the expedited-discovery motion on October 1.

Context

Apple originally sued OpenAI in July 2026, arguing that the AI company had systematically recruited Apple hardware engineers — reporting places the number at more than 400 former Apple employees now working at OpenAI — to shortcut its way into building competitive consumer devices using Apple's own trade secrets. OpenAI has been building out a hardware division for over a year, and Apple's central claim has been that OpenAI's device ambitions rest partly on IP that left Apple through departing engineers rather than independent development. This filing is the first to allege that evidence in the case was actively destroyed rather than simply withheld or delayed.

Why it matters

Evidence-destruction claims raise the stakes of the underlying case considerably: courts can sanction a party for spoliation with adverse-inference instructions to a jury, monetary penalties, or in extreme cases default judgment on the affected claims, independent of whether the original trade-secret allegations are ultimately proven. For OpenAI, already facing legal and regulatory scrutiny on multiple fronts this year, a court finding that it or its employees destroyed evidence would be damaging both in this case and as a credibility marker in its other pending litigation. The expedited-discovery hearing on October 1 will be an early signal of how seriously the court is taking Apple's claims.