Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence

Apple is asking for expedited discovery in its lawsuit against OpenAI, arguing the company is actively destroying evidence. In a Monday filing, Apple says OpenAI only just handed over a MacBook used by a former Apple employee at the center of the case, and that the laptop contained discussions about destroying the types of forensic data Apple needs.

The underlying suit accuses OpenAI of stealing trade secrets to build an AI device. It revolves around three former Apple employees who joined OpenAI, including Chang Liu, who allegedly kept a company-owned MacBook after leaving Apple. The case began in July. The laptop, Apple says, reached Apple on August 21. That lag is now the fight.

Apple's filing is aggressive and specific, which is usually a sign a trade-secret case is getting uglier rather than settling into discovery-as-usual. Apple says OpenAI had the MacBook since the start of the lawsuit and failed to inspect it. Once produced, an inspection allegedly found that Liu downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic and used it in his work at OpenAI. Apple also claims Liu and others at OpenAI knew he still had access to Apple's third-party cloud storage.

The spoliation hook is a set of messages in which Liu allegedly discussed the need to "restore" and then "start using" Apple-owned devices after learning of Apple's internal investigation in June. Apple's argument is that logs, metadata, and usage records are transient, and that waiting any longer means those artifacts die. That is a standard forensic point. It lands harder when the device in question is the other side's alleged smoking gun and it arrived six weeks into the case.

OpenAI's reply is that the dispute is a mess of Apple's own making — that Apple's employee-exit process is a mess — and that there is no evidence Liu accessed Apple information through improper means or for an improper purpose. It adds that Liu has no use for Apple confidential information. Those last two sentences are hard to square with a downloaded circuit schematic, if Apple's inspection account holds. They are easier to square with a theory that a sloppy offboarding left a laptop and a cloud account alive, and that OpenAI inherited a mess rather than ran a raid.

Both can be true. Apple can have a leaky exit process and still have a real secrets case. OpenAI can have a sloppy intake and still owe a court a preserved disk. The likelier near-term outcome is that expedited discovery gets taken seriously; judges dislike "we just found the laptop" stories, whoever is telling them. The part the public filing still does not illuminate is the AI device at the center of the suit. Talent-raid cases often start as hiring fights and become product fights only if the documents show a build. The schematic, if it is real and if it was used, is how you get from one to the other.

Apple's suit is one of several talent-and-secrets fights traveling with the current AI hiring wave. Three ex-Apple employees moving to OpenAI would be an ordinary poaching story without the retained MacBook and the cloud-access claim. Those two facts are why this is in court instead of in a recruiter's spreadsheet.