Apple OpenAI Lawsuit: Trial Set for July 19, 2027

Apple sues OpenAI: trade secret claims filed in federal court

Apple sued OpenAI on Friday, July 10, 2026, in federal court in Northern California, alleging trade secret theft. According to the suit, OpenAI took Apple's intellectual property so it could develop consumer hardware of its own. CNBC, which reported the filing that day, called it "a shocking reversal" for two companies that became partners in 2024.

Apple wants both money and court orders. CNBC reports that it is seeking damages and injunctions, which are court orders to stop something, plus an order forcing OpenAI to stop using Apple's trade secrets. In the filing, Apple says the theft reached every level of the company, from technical staff to the chief hardware officer, and that OpenAI worked in coordination with business partners.

Also named alongside OpenAI: Tang Tan and Chang Liu, plus IO Products

Apple's suit names Tang Tan and Chang Liu as defendants alongside OpenAI, and it also names IO Products. Each has a different tie to Apple:

• Tang Tan is OpenAI's hardware chief and a former Apple vice president.
• Chang Liu is a former Apple employee who joined OpenAI.
• IO Products is the startup of former Apple designer Jony Ive, which OpenAI bought.

Tan and Liu are each the subject of a specific allegation in Apple's filing. IO Products is tied to the case through OpenAI's 2025 purchase of it, made as OpenAI moved into hardware.

From the partnership to OpenAI hardware and Jony Ive's IO Products

Apple and OpenAI, from partners to a lawsuit

1. 2024
   The two companies announce a partnership that builds ChatGPT into the iPhone's operating system
2. 2025
   OpenAI announces plans to enter hardware and buys Jony Ive's startup, IO Products, for $6.4 billion
3. July 10, 2026
   Apple sues OpenAI, alleging trade secret theft

The two companies became partners in 2024, when ChatGPT was built into the iPhone's operating system. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman came to Apple's headquarters when the deal was announced. In 2025, OpenAI announced plans to enter the hardware business and bought IO Products, the startup of former Apple designer Jony Ive, for $6.4 billion.

CNBC says relations between the two companies have cooled since then. Its report does not say that the hardware push is what led Apple to sue.

What the Apple OpenAI lawsuit alleges: former employees and partners

Most of Apple's allegations involve former Apple employees who interviewed at OpenAI or went to work there, CNBC reports. The three claims that follow are Apple's side, taken from its filing as CNBC relays it, and the category list after them comes from an outside outline. These are claims for the court to test, not findings.

Tang Tan and the interview claim: actual parts for show and tell

Apple alleges that Tang Tan directed its employees who were interviewing for jobs at OpenAI to share company secrets during those interviews. The filing says he told candidates who still worked at Apple to bring "actual parts" from the company to the interviews. According to Apple, the parts were meant for "show and tell" sessions where Tan and his team could draw out still more confidential information.

Chang Liu and the Apple laptop: claims about leaving employees

Apple alleges that OpenAI coached employees who were leaving Apple on how to get around its security processes on the way out. It also claims that Chang Liu, who left Apple to join OpenAI, stole an Apple laptop. Liu is named as a defendant, and OpenAI's August post gives its own account of his case, set out in the section on OpenAI's response.

The metal finishing claim: OpenAI's requests to hardware firms

Apple believes OpenAI is asking hardware firms to use a metal finishing technique that Apple invented, according to CNBC. Apple says this involved "misleading the partner" into believing it had Apple's permission. Of Apple's three specific claims, it is the one that involves business partners rather than former employees.

Five trade secret categories the complaint lists

An outline of the complaint by explainx.ai sorts the trade secrets in Section II of the complaint into five categories. The names below are that outline's headings, and CNBC's report does not list them:

• Hardware engineering and product design
• Manufacturing, industrial design, and process engineering
• Component technologies
• Testing, validation, and development methodologies
• Supply chain and proprietary business operations

Read together, the headings reach past product design into manufacturing, testing and the supply chain. The headings alone do not say which secrets fall under each one.

OpenAI response to Apple: a July 10 statement and an August post

How OpenAI has answered the Apple lawsuit

Date	Event
July 10	OpenAI tells CNBC it has no interest in other companies' trade secrets
August 3	OpenAI publishes "Apple is getting this wrong" on its site
August 6	OpenAI adds its Motion to Dismiss to the post
September 1	OpenAI adds its opposition to Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction

On July 10, Apple told CNBC that significant evidence pointed to people employed by OpenAI wrongfully taking its confidential information, and OpenAI replied that it has no interest in other companies' trade secrets. A longer answer followed on August 3, 2026, in a post titled "Apple is getting this wrong." In that post, the company disputes several of Apple's specific claims.

Apple and OpenAI statements on trade secrets, July 10

Both companies gave CNBC a statement on the day Apple filed. Apple's spokesperson said significant evidence had recently come to light. According to Apple, that evidence suggests people working for OpenAI wrongfully took secret information about its unreleased technologies, processes and products.

OpenAI's spokesperson answered in general terms. The company said it has no interest in other companies' trade secrets and is focused on building technology that helps people everywhere. The statement does not address any specific claim, and CNBC quotes nothing else from OpenAI in that report.

The August post: Apple is getting this wrong

In a post dated August 3, 2026, OpenAI disputes Apple's account of how the two sides were in contact before the suit, the claims about Chang Liu and Tang Tan, and the request for an injunction. The post calls the lawsuit "careless, aggressive and oddly personal." Everything in the paragraphs below is OpenAI's account.

On the lead-up to the suit, OpenAI says Apple had claimed it reached out in February and got no reply. According to the post, Apple now admits that its outside lawyers sent an email to the wrong person after mixing up two Asian surnames, and that a claimed talk with OpenAI's General Counsel never happened. The post adds that Apple said at the time it was "resolving any issues" and then went silent for five months until it sued.

The emails OpenAI posted, the first dated February 23, 2026, are between Apple's outside lawyer Gabriel Gross, OpenAI General Counsel Che Chang and Apple's in-house legal team. According to the post, Gross wrote to OpenAI's General Counsel by mistake and wrongly claimed the two had spoken, and Gross and Apple's in-house counsel later confirmed the error.

On Chang Liu, OpenAI says Apple accuses him of accessing Apple confidential information after he left. The post says Apple has only now admitted that its own employees contacted him and asked him to help find that information.

The post includes iMessages in which former colleagues ask Liu, whose last day at Apple was January 22, 2026, to help them locate files for their Apple work. It also addresses Apple's "residual access" explanation and calls it a common problem at Apple, caused by the company not managing system access properly when people leave.

On Tang Tan, OpenAI says he has always told the team that the company does not want, and must not use, confidential information from other companies. It adds that he served Apple for more than 24 years. The post says Apple's request for a preliminary injunction is based on false information and unnecessary, because OpenAI neither has nor wants any of Apple's trade secrets.

Two updates have since been added to the same page. On August 6, 2026, OpenAI posted its Motion to Dismiss, a filing that asks the court to throw out the case. On September 1, 2026, it posted its opposition to Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction.

The October 13 order gives Apple limited early discovery

On October 13, 2026, Judge Edward J. Davila of the federal court in San Jose granted in part Apple's request for early discovery. Discovery is the exchange of evidence between the sides, and the order lets Apple have some of it ahead of the normal schedule. The order does not decide whether anyone took trade secrets.

The case is Apple Inc. v. Chang Liu, et al., Case No. 5:26-cv-07078-EJD. The judge decided the motion without oral argument and canceled the October 14 hearing on it. The request for OpenAI's research and development records, which he turned down, is left to "ordinary merits discovery," the regular stage that follows.

What the judge allowed, denied and put on hold on October 13

Request	Ruling	Detail
Forensic images already collected	Granted	Due within 5 days of the order
Interview materials for Apple candidates at OpenAI's Consumer Hardware Products Group, including its Robotics Group	Granted, as modified	Due within 14 days, or 5 days if already collected
LINE chats between Chang Liu and Alyssa Peng since Jan. 1, 2026	Granted	Due within 14 days, or 5 days if already collected
Depositions of Chang Liu, Tang Tan and Alyssa Peng	Granted	Within 30 days after Apple receives the responses
Depositions of OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI Group PBC and io Products through company representatives	Granted on Topic 1	Covers the roles of the company witnesses, Tan, Liu, Peng and one person whose name is redacted
Deposition of a fourth person	Denied at this time	The order does not name the person
R&D records on metal finishes, power management and battery functionality	Denied	Left to ordinary discovery
Requests that use the term "Apple Originated Information"	Put on hold	Apple has 5 days to offer a tighter definition; ruled on October 27 (see below)

Apple gets forensic images, interview records and LINE chats

The judge granted three of Apple's document requests. The defendants must answer within 14 days of the order, or within 5 days for materials they have already collected.

• Forensic images. These are all forensic images, meaning copies of a device's contents made for analysis, that the defendants have already collected on the subject of Apple's claims. The judge says the images of Liu's devices have become a prominent part of Apple's pending motion for a preliminary injunction, which asks for an interim order while the case goes on, so some of the early discovery clearly relates to that motion. Apple says its forensic expert needs the images to look for flaws in the defense experts' analysis and for any deletion.
• Interview materials. These are the documents used to guide or conduct interviews of Apple candidates for OpenAI's Consumer Hardware Products Group, which includes its Robotics Group. They cover checklists, guides, instructions, manuals and scripts, plus technical presentations such as Technical Deep Dive decks that summarize those interviews or mention Apple technology or parts. The judge granted this request as modified.
• LINE chats. These are all LINE conversations since Jan. 1, 2026, between Liu and Alyssa Peng, including those cited in a declaration. LINE is a messaging app.

Chang Liu, Tang Tan and Alyssa Peng must sit for depositions

The judge granted Apple depositions of Chang Liu, Tang Tan and Alyssa Peng. A deposition is questioning of a witness outside court. The three must sit for it within 30 days after Apple receives all responses to the requests the order permits.

The order writes Tan's name as Tang Yew Tan. Peng appears in the order as Yu-Ting "Alyssa" Peng, Liu's correspondent in the LINE chats, and is not listed as a defendant. The judge denied, at this time, Apple's request to depose a fourth person listed in its narrowed requests.

The judge also allowed Apple to question OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI Group PBC and io Products through company representatives, a format that lets each company pick the people who speak for it. That is limited to Topic 1: the positions, roles and responsibilities within OpenAI of the company's witnesses, Tan, Liu, Peng and one other person whose name is redacted in the order.

The judge denies early R&D records and defers a vague term

The judge denied one request for now and put another on hold. The denied request asks for all documents on OpenAI's research and development on metal finishes, power management or battery functionality for consumer hardware products. The judge says such requests are better handled through ordinary merits discovery, so the defendants need not answer now.

That is a ruling about timing, not about the metal finishing claim. The requests that use the term "Apple Originated Information" are on hold. The order quotes the definition as any information created for or by Apple, or learned or created in support of any Apple business, that is not given to the public in its entirety.

The judge calls the term amorphous, meaning vague, as it is currently defined, and says the breadth makes some requests an "extremely burdensome, and perhaps untenable task." Apple may confer with the defendants and offer a tighter definition within 5 days of the order, and the judge will then review it.

Apple and the defendants later filed a narrower definition together. The judge adopted it with changes on October 27 and ruled on the held requests in the same order.

What the order does not decide about the trade secret claims

This is a ruling about evidence, not about the claims. The order does not say that OpenAI, Liu, Tan or anyone else took or used an Apple trade secret, and it names no winner.

As the order describes Apple's brief, its expert reviewed Liu's MacBook and concluded that he used an Apple trade secret file in March 2026. As the order describes the defendants' response, their expert examined a Mac Mini and found no evidence that he used a purported trade secret file with an AI platform. The judge declined to weigh the two experts' competing findings at this stage.

The judge limited the grant because he found that Apple's requests, even as narrowed, remain quite broad and would be onerous for the defendants to meet. He still granted some early discovery because he agreed with Apple that it is needed to learn the scope of any alleged misappropriation. The reason is Apple's concern, which the judge accepted, that trade secrets could become "so deeply entangled with OpenAI's hardware products or other research and development efforts that the harm cannot be undone."

The order calls Apple's preliminary injunction motion pending. Neither of the two later orders rules on it.

The October 27 order rules on the requests the judge put on hold

On October 27, 2026, Judge Davila ruled on the requests he had put on hold on October 13, granting the requests aimed at Liu and Tan and three deposition topics, and denying the rest. He first adopted, with changes, a narrower definition of "Apple Originated Information" that Apple and the defendants filed together. Like the earlier order, this one is about evidence and does not decide whether anything was taken.

The adopted definition covers three kinds of non-public Apple information. The first is material tied to the trade secrets Apple has identified so far, and the second is engineering information on consumer hardware, metal finishing, battery design and manufacturing, and hardware components. The third is anything the company labeled confidential.

It counts only if an Apple employee, or a former Apple employee now at OpenAI or io Products, created, obtained or learned it. Each item below is measured against that definition.

Liu's AI tool records, and the devices and apps Liu and Tan used

Liu must produce records of his use of AI tools from January 23, 2026, to the present. The order names forensic records of his use of Claude, Codex, ChatGPT and OpenClaw on his Mac Mini and personal accounts, along with his use of AI tools on company devices and accounts. It covers what the order calls his alleged "personal experimentation" and any use involving Apple Originated Information.

Liu and Tan must also answer interrogatories, which are written questions that a party must answer. Each must list every account, device, storage location and app used to view, keep or share that information, and the order names LINE, Signal, Telegram and Kik. For Liu the period starts after January 22, 2026, and for Tan after February 2, 2024.

If a device or account no longer holds the information, they must say what was on it, how long it stayed there, and when, by whom and why it was erased or destroyed. The records are due within 14 days of the order, or 5 days for material already collected, and the written answers within 14 days.

Three more topics for OpenAI's corporate witnesses

Apple may now question the company representatives of OpenAI and io Products on three more topics. On October 13 the judge had allowed only Topic 1, the roles of the people involved. The new topics are these:

• Topic 2. Work at OpenAI involving Apple Originated Information on power management, battery management or metal finishing, by Liu, Tan, Peng and one person whose name is sealed.
• Topic 4. OpenAI's interviews of or by those four people, including requests or guidance given to candidates before an interview, any effort to draw out Apple information, interview feedback and job offers.
• Topic 5. The steps OpenAI took, or failed to take, to keep those people from getting, using or disclosing Apple information without permission, and to return or wall off any it found.

Topic 2 brings metal finishing into the testimony. The October 27 order does not revisit the October 13 denial of early R&D documents on metal finishes, so the two rulings cover different requests.

What the judge turned down on October 27

The judge turned down the written questions aimed at OpenAI and io themselves, plus two deposition topics. The three interrogatories to the companies asked them to list OpenAI's accounts and devices holding Apple information and to describe any deletion.

They also asked how OpenAI learned of that information and what it did next, including after Apple's pre-suit letter of February 23. He left all three to ordinary merits discovery, so the companies need not answer now.

He also denied Topics 3 and 6 for the company witnesses as too broad at this stage. And he declined to treat the new interrogatories as falling outside the 25-question cap in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33, though Apple may ask to exceed that cap later. As with the October 13 order, nothing here decides whether OpenAI, Liu or Tan took Apple's trade secrets.

Judge Davila sets the Apple OpenAI trial for July 19, 2027

The Apple OpenAI lawsuit is scheduled for trial on July 19, 2027, at 9 a.m. Judge Davila set the date in a case management order on October 28, 2026. The parties had appeared before him for a case management conference on October 14.

The order fixes dates and nothing more. It does not rule on the trade secret claims or on Apple's request for a preliminary injunction.

Key dates before the July 2027 trial

Evidence on the facts must be gathered by March 12, 2027, and expert evidence by April 28, 2027. Motions on expert testimony and on deciding the case without a trial come next, and the last weeks before trial are for pretrial filings. The “Schedule in the case management order of October 28, 2026” table below lists every date the order sets.

Schedule in the case management order of October 28, 2026

Date	Step
Nov. 2, 2026	The sides exchange electronically stored information
Nov. 30, 2026	Last day to amend the pleadings or add parties
Feb. 5, 2027	Document production substantially complete
Feb. 26, 2027	Joint status report due
Mar. 11, 2027, 10 a.m.	Status conference
Mar. 12, 2027	Fact discovery closes
Mar. 31, 2027	Opening expert reports due
Apr. 14, 2027	Rebuttal expert reports due
Apr. 28, 2027	Expert discovery closes
May 5, 2027	Daubert and dispositive motions due (oppositions May 19, replies May 26)
June 1, 2027	Lead counsel meet on settlement, pretrial filings and the issues for trial
June 3, 2027	Motions in limine due
June 10, 2027, 9 a.m.	Hearing on Daubert and dispositive motions
June 24, 2027, 10 a.m.	Final pretrial conference
July 19, 2027, 9 a.m.	Trial

A dispositive motion asks the judge to decide the case, or part of it, without a trial. A Daubert motion asks the judge to keep out an expert's testimony. Motions in limine ask the judge to settle, before trial, how certain evidence may be used.

The order sets the steps leading up to trial

By June 1, 2027, the lead lawyers on both sides must meet about settlement, joint pretrial filings and narrowing the issues for trial. The order also adopts the two sides' lists of disputed facts and legal issues from their joint statement. It holds discovery to the default limits in the federal rules, and the judge warned the parties not to plan on getting permission for more.

Apple did not say if the lawsuit affects the ChatGPT partnership

In CNBC's July 10 report, Apple did not comment on whether the lawsuit will affect its partnership with OpenAI, which includes ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence. Separately, CNBC reports that the updated Siri coming this fall is based on Google's Gemini models instead of OpenAI's technology. CNBC adds that mounting legal woes are another risk for OpenAI.

ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence and Siri on Gemini

CNBC's report does not say that anything will change for ChatGPT on the iPhone. The 2024 deal built ChatGPT into the iPhone's operating system, and the partnership includes ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence, Apple's set of AI features. Apple did not comment on whether the suit will touch that arrangement.

Siri is a separate point. The report says the new Siri due this fall is based on Google's Gemini models rather than OpenAI's technology. It does not link that choice to the lawsuit, and it says nothing more about what iPhone users will see.

OpenAI device plans and first prototypes, plus the Musk trial

OpenAI has not announced when its hardware products will come out or what they will be. In its July 10 report, CNBC says Altman said in November that the company had finished its first prototypes. CNBC also calls the mounting legal fights another risk for OpenAI while it prepares for what is expected to be a historic IPO, its first sale of shares to the public.

The same report notes that the Apple suit arrived two months after OpenAI beat Elon Musk in a high-profile trial. Musk, who helped start OpenAI, had sued over claims that the company, Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman went back on agreements to keep it a nonprofit, and a federal jury found he had waited too long to do so. Musk said he would appeal.

Separately, reports on June 12, 2026, said a coalition of state attorneys general had served OpenAI with a subpoena. The states have not said how many joined. OpenAI investigation: what state AGs subpoenaed has the details.

What is on the record in the Apple OpenAI lawsuit so far is Apple's set of claims, OpenAI's replies, the discovery orders of October 13 and October 27, and a trial date of July 19, 2027. OpenAI has answered with a general statement on July 10 and an August post that disputes several of Apple's claims.

The October orders rule on evidence and set a schedule. None of them rules on the claims themselves, on OpenAI's Motion to Dismiss or on Apple's preliminary injunction motion.