Industrial espionage: Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence

August 31, 2026 will remain in Cupertino’s history as Tim Cook’s last day at the helm, almost exactly fifteen years to the day after he succeeded Steve Jobs. John Ternus, who has headed hardware engineering for years, takes the reins this Tuesday, September 1, with a keynote scheduled for as early as the 9th, where the iPhone 18 are expected.On that same Monday, the firm’s lawyers filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California an additional piece of evidence in the lawsuit the company has pursued against OpenAI since July 10, and this piece of evidence has a name: Chang Liu’s MacBook.

What an Ex-Engineer’s MacBook Revealed to Apple’s Lawyers

For those who missed the earlier episodes, the complaint filed on July 10 names OpenAI, io Products (the hardware entity resulting from the acquisition of Jony Ive’s company) and two former Apple employees. First, Tang Yew Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple and is now head of hardware at OpenAI, followed by Chang Liu, a senior systems engineer who left in January after eight years of service. Apple accuses Liu of keeping a work MacBook still connected to its networks, then using residual access and an authentication bug to download dozens of confidential files. OpenAI denies everything, calls the complaint “strangely personal” and seeks its dismissal, notably pointing out that Apple had simply failed to revoke its former employee’s access.

The document filed Monday adds a chapter that Cupertino describes as “shocking evidence”. Liu’s lawyers eventually handed over the MacBook he had continued to use since leaving, after a weeks-long delay according to Apple’s filings, and an initial forensic examination produced four findings. Liu allegedly not only downloaded a confidential circuit schematic but also used it in his work at OpenAI, through a simulation launched in March in LTspice, a widely used electronic engineering software.His persistent access to an online storage space used by Apple would have been known to others at OpenAI. When an internal investigation targeting him was announced, he would have sent a colleague instructions to delete items, which she would have confirmed she was following. He would also have used a tool bearing the same name as an internal Apple application. All of this remains an allegation; the document is partly redacted, and the colleague in question is not identified in the passages made public.

Can a secret swallowed by AI still be returned to its owner?

In a trade-secret misappropriation case, the judge’s toolkit has been well established for decades: ordering the return of documents, prohibiting their use, and compelling the destruction of copies. The Liu case complicates the matter in a rather unprecedented way. In messages from the same period, the engineer explained that his AI “agent” had learned to run LTspice and analyze its results. Apple makes this a central argument: confidential information ingested by an agent or a model that learns from its inputs can give rise to irreversible uses that spread continuously. A trade secret in a model is like a drop of ink in a glass of water; you cannot scoop it out with a pipette. Hence the company’s insistence on obtaining an expedited evidence-collection procedure and a preliminary injunction, two requests that OpenAI is fighting tooth and nail.

John Ternus, an engineer by training and a 25-year veteran of the company, takes over a legal dispute that specifically concerns schematics, motherboards, and prototypes. More than 400 former Apple employees have joined OpenAI, which is preparing a consumer device with Jony Ive’s teams, and this same device is what the complaint indirectly targets. His first keynote, on September 9, should unveil the first foldable iPhone, if the rumors are true. Tim Cook, now executive chairman of the board, will keep an eye on the matter, but decisions about what comes next will now be made by an engineer.

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Source: Apple via 9to5mac