In a court filing submitted on August 31, Apple told a federal court that OpenAI had “actively destroyed key evidence” and that Chang Liu, a former iPhone engineer who moved to the AI company, “not only downloaded Apple’s confidential circuit schematics but used them in his work at OpenAI.” The filing supports Apple’s motion for expedited pre-trial discovery, an early stage of litigation in which the winner is often decided by what evidence survives.
The case began in early August, when Apple sought a preliminary injunction against OpenAI, accusing the company of poaching 11 former Apple employees and building an AI device based on Apple technology. OpenAI has asked the court to dismiss the case. If the evidence-destruction claim holds up, it could shape the court’s decision on the injunction, and the stakes are high: a ruling against OpenAI could restrict its work on AI hardware just as the company prepares to expand beyond software.
Liu’s role gives the dispute a concrete center. He is described in court papers as a chip engineer who had access to Apple’s most sensitive circuit designs, the kind of material that determines how a phone performs, how long its battery lasts and how its AI features run. Apple says he downloaded the schematics before leaving and then used them in his work at OpenAI, a claim OpenAI denies. Neither company commented beyond the filings.
The accusation of destroyed evidence, known in legal terms as spoliation, is a serious charge in trade-secret litigation. Courts can sanction parties that destroy relevant material, ranging from fines to instructions to juries that the missing evidence would have favored the other side. Apple’s motion argues that OpenAI’s conduct warrants fast-tracked discovery precisely because delay would let more evidence disappear. Legal analysts said such motions succeed only when the moving party can show a concrete pattern of conduct, not just a suspicion.
The case is the most visible front in a broader competition between Apple and OpenAI. The two companies have a complicated relationship: Apple has discussed integrating OpenAI’s technology into its devices, and OpenAI’s valuation has soared on the strength of its software. But the talent war has grown bitter. Apple has sued or threatened to sue departing employees before, and OpenAI has built much of its engineering team by hiring from larger rivals. Musk, who has his own disputes with OpenAI, weighed in on X with a comment about a leopard and its spots, a reference to the idea that a company’s conduct does not change.
The timing matters. The preliminary injunction hearing, whenever the court schedules it, will test whether Apple can show that its trade secrets are at risk of further use. Trade-secret law requires companies to act quickly when they suspect misappropriation, and Apple filed within weeks of Liu’s departure, according to people familiar with the matter. OpenAI’s dismissal motion argues the case rests on speculation about technology that Apple cannot identify.
For the wider industry, the fight is a test of how far companies will go to protect chip design, the crown jewels of the AI hardware boom. Circuit schematics are among the hardest assets to protect once an engineer changes employers, because the knowledge travels in the engineer’s head as much as in files. Lawyers who follow the case said the discovery fight, not the eventual trial, will reveal how strong Apple’s evidence really is.
The dispute also reflects how the AI boom has scrambled the normal rules of hiring in Silicon Valley. Apple spent years building a chip team that most of the industry envies, and it has treated departures to rivals as a serious matter, extracting confidentiality agreements that restrict what engineers can work on elsewhere. OpenAI, for its part, has recruited aggressively from every corner of the industry and has defended its hiring practices as ordinary competition. The tension between those two positions is now playing out in court, where the details of Liu’s downloads, his timing and his work at OpenAI will be examined item by item.
The evidence fight also carries reputational weight for OpenAI, which has spent the past year portraying itself as a disciplined steward of the technology it builds. A finding that it mishandled another company’s trade secrets would undercut that narrative and give regulators a fresh line of inquiry at a moment when the company is already under scrutiny in Washington and Brussels. Apple, for its part, risks looking like a giant suing an upstart, a framing it has tried to avoid by emphasizing the specificity of its allegations.
Neither side shows signs of backing down. Apple has asked the court to move quickly, OpenAI has asked it to end the case, and both are spending heavily on outside counsel. Neither company wants the discovery record, once built, to linger unread. Analysts said the most likely outcome is a settlement that lets OpenAI keep its hardware team while paying Apple for access or agreeing to restrictions, but the evidence fight could change the calculus. “Discovery is where trade-secret cases are won,” one litigator said. “Whoever controls the documents controls the outcome.”
