Apple Accuses OpenAI of Destroying Evidence in Exchange of Barbs

Apple Inc. escalated its legal battle against OpenAI, claiming in a court filing that OpenAI is actively destroying crucial evidence and that former iPhone engineer Chang Liu “not only downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic but also used it in his work” at the AI company.

The court brief was filed Monday in support of Apple’s motion for expedited pretrial fact-finding in the lawsuit, which accuses the ChatGPT maker of stealing trade secrets. OpenAI has pushed to have the case dismissed and said in its own filing Monday that “this dispute is a mess of Apple’s own making.”

Liu, who left Apple for OpenAI in January, is central to the case. He is one of more than 400 former Apple employees who went to work for the AI company, which is making a foray into the market for hardware devices.

Related: OpenAI Asks Judge to Toss Apple’s Trade Secrets Lawsuit

According to Apple’s latest filing, OpenAI “only recently” provided a key piece of evidence: an Apple-issued MacBook that Liu had been using since departing the company. An initial forensic analysis has found that “Mr. Liu and others at OpenAI were well aware” of his continued unauthorized access to Apple’s third-party cloud storage providers, the filing said.