A laptop arrived late. What was on it made things worse. And now Apple is asking a federal court to move faster, arguing that evidence in its lawsuit against OpenAI is being actively destroyed.
Apple filed a new brief on Aug. 31, escalating its legal battle against the ChatGPT maker. The filing accuses OpenAI of withholding key evidence and alleges that a former Apple engineer sent instructions to an OpenAI colleague to destroy documents. The colleague confirmed she would comply, Bloomberg reported.
What Apple’s new court filing says about OpenAI
The brief was filed Monday, Aug. 31, in support of Apple’s motion for expedited pretrial fact-finding in its trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI.
Apple’s lawyers said OpenAI only recently provided a critical piece of evidence: an Apple-issued MacBook that former engineer Chang Liu had been using since leaving the company.
Initial forensic analysis of the laptop found that Liu and colleagues at OpenAI “were well aware” of his continued unauthorized access to Apple’s third-party cloud storage providers. The filing alleges Liu also “sent instructions for destroying evidence to an OpenAI colleague who confirmed she would comply.”
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Apple also claimed Liu “used a tool in his work at OpenAI that has the same name as an internal Apple engineering application used for Apple development work.”
The company’s lawyers wrote that the laptop “shows Apple is not conducting ‘fishing expeditions’ but that its trade secrets are being used and evidence is being destroyed,” Bloomberg reported.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Why Chang Liu is central to the Apple-OpenAI lawsuit
Liu left Apple for OpenAI in January 2026. He is one of more than 400 former Apple employees who have gone to work for the AI company.
That number is central to Apple’s original complaint, which accused OpenAI of actively recruiting Apple workers and encouraging them to share confidential information, components, drawings and other materials related to unreleased products while taking steps to cover its tracks.
Apple’s filing states Liu “not only downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic but also used it in his work” at OpenAI, Bloomberg reported.
Downloading proprietary schematics is one thing. Using them in your new employer’s work is another. Apple’s lawyers are making that distinction count.
OpenAI has maintained throughout that it followed industry-standard recruiting practices. On the specific issue of Liu’s access to Apple’s cloud storage, OpenAI published text message excerpts and argued he was simply helping a former colleague at Apple, not exfiltrating data.
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How the Apple-OpenAI relationship collapsed
The two companies had a working relationship not long ago. Apple integrated ChatGPT into its devices through a partnership unveiled at its developer conference. That collaboration began to fray over the past year as OpenAI moved more aggressively into hardware.
The turning point was OpenAI’s decision to bring in Jony Ive. Ive was Apple’s design chief for decades. He is the person responsible for the physical form of the iPhone, the Mac, and much of what people associate with Apple’s look.
He left in 2019. OpenAI hired him to lead hardware. Apple noticed.
The first device from the Ive-OpenAI collaboration, Bloomberg reported, will be a doughnut-shaped smart speaker, roughly the size of a hockey puck, with moving parts designed to give it personality. OpenAI is building hardware products that will compete directly with Apple in categories Apple has owned for two decades.
What Apple is asking OpenAI for and what happens next
Apple wants money, and it wants OpenAI to stop. The company is asking the court for monetary damages. It also wants a court order forcing OpenAI to halt the alleged misuse and destroy any Apple materials still in its possession.
Earlier in August, Apple made a separate move. It asked a federal judge to immediately issue that stop order, without waiting for the full case to play out. That request is still pending.
The judge is scheduled to hear arguments on Oct. 1 on the motion for expedited fact-finding. It’s this motion in support of which Apple filed the Monday, Aug. 31, brief.
Expedited fact-finding would compress the timeline. Instead of waiting for discovery to unfold over months or years, the way standard litigation usually does, OpenAI would have to hand over documents and sit for depositions much sooner.
That matters because of where OpenAI is right now. The company is building hardware. It is raising money. It is preparing, eventually, to go public.
A wave of forced early document production arriving during that window could be disruptive in ways that go beyond the legal fees.
For investors watching Apple stock, the case is a reminder that the company’s competitive response to OpenAI’s hardware ambitions is not limited to building better products. Apple is also using the courts.
How aggressively that strategy plays out over the next few months depends, in large part, on what the judge decides on Oct. 1.
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