Apple Inc. v. Liu (No. 5:26-cv-07078, N.D. Cal.) is a trade-secret suit filed by Apple on July 10, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against OpenAI, its nonprofit parent OpenAI Foundation, the AI-hardware startup io Products, and two former Apple employees — Tang Yew Tan, now OpenAI's chief hardware officer, and Chang Liu, a former Apple senior engineer (Source: courtlistener.com) (Source: reuters.com). The complaint alleges misappropriation of trade secrets "at every level" to accelerate OpenAI's consumer-hardware effort, and seeks damages, disgorgement of unjust enrichment, a preliminary injunction, the return of Apple property, and a jury trial (Source: cnbc.com) (Source: courthousenews.com).
Infobox
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Case | Apple Inc. v. Liu et al. |
| Docket | 5:26-cv-07078 |
| Court | U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose) |
| Filed | July 10, 2026 |
| Claims | Trade-secret misappropriation (Defend Trade Secrets Act); breach of contract / intellectual-property agreements against the individual defendants |
| Relief sought | Damages, unjust enrichment, preliminary injunction, return of property; jury demand |
| Status | Active — preliminary injunction and expedited discovery sought |
Background
The suit arises from OpenAI's move into consumer hardware, built in part on its May 2025 acquisition of the io hardware startup associated with former Apple design chief Jony Ive, a $6.5 billion deal (see OpenAI). Tan, a defendant, worked at Apple for 24 years, most recently as vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, co-founded io Products, and serves as OpenAI's chief hardware officer (Source: courthousenews.com). Apple states in the complaint that more than 400 of its former employees now work at OpenAI, and that it raised concerns in a February 2026 letter to OpenAI that went unanswered (Source: cnbc.com). Bloomberg reported on July 11, 2026 that months of tensions preceded the filing, including a strained relationship between Tan and incoming Apple CEO John Ternus, and that most of the roughly 400 employees OpenAI hired from Apple came from Ternus's hardware division (Source: bloomberg.com). The suit also came less than a month after OpenAI was reported to be threatening Apple with litigation over their ChatGPT-iPhone agreement (Source: spyglass.org).
Claims and allegations
Apple brings trade-secret misappropriation claims under the Defend Trade Secrets Act against all defendants, with additional breach claims against Liu and Tan tied to their Apple intellectual-property agreements (Source: courthousenews.com). Coverage of the 41-page complaint published July 13, 2026 reported that it accuses OpenAI of soliciting unreleased components during job interviews and names Tan and two other former Apple employees, as OpenAI prepares its first AI hardware device for 2027 (Source: theverge.com). Coverage also tied the claims to OpenAI's $6.5 billion acquisition of io and a planned "AI Agent Phone," and reported allegations that employees emailed themselves confidential files on unreleased products (Source: cnbc.com). The complaint's principal allegations, as reported:
- Tan directed Apple employees interviewing at OpenAI to bring "actual parts" from Apple to interviews for "show and tell" sessions with the OpenAI team, which the complaint describes as "part of OpenAI's strategy to extract Apple's confidential information" (Source: reuters.com) (Source: courthousenews.com).
- Liu, who joined OpenAI in January 2026, kept an Apple laptop after departing, used a colleague's computer authorization, and "exploited a rare, previously unknown authentication bug" — classified as a zero-day vulnerability — to access Apple's shared network folders and download confidential hardware files (Source: courthousenews.com) (Source: cnbc.com) (Source: techcrunch.com). Per the 41-page complaint, Liu retained access to Apple's internal file-sharing system via the since-fixed bug on February 9, 2026 and downloaded dozens of confidential files (Source: wired.com).
- The complaint describes messages between Liu and Apple employee Yu-Ting "Alyssa" Peng, whom it portrays as a conduit between the companies and who herself later joined OpenAI (Source: techcrunch.com).
- OpenAI had an Apple supplier perform a metal-finishing technique that Apple invented and treats as confidential (Source: cnbc.com).
- OpenAI coached departing Apple employees on evading Apple's security processes (Source: cnbc.com).
The complaint states that Apple "has invested hundreds of billions of dollars and decades of effort" in consumer hardware such as iPhone, Apple Watch, and MacBook, and that OpenAI "has resorted to taking unlawful shortcuts" in its push into the products market (Source: courthousenews.com). It calls OpenAI's hardware business "rotten to its core" (Source: wired.com; fortune.com). Apple's requested relief includes a redesign of upcoming OpenAI hardware; OpenAI court filings connected to the case indicate no device will ship before April 2027 (Source: wired.com; ai-supremacy.com).
OpenAI responded that it has "no interest in other companies' trade secrets" (Source: reuters.com) (Source: 9to5mac.com). On July 14, 2026, OpenAI said it is "not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit" and disputed Apple's account that its February 2026 outreach went unanswered, citing emails it says show an Apple lawyer confused two OpenAI employees (Source: bloomberg.com; techcrunch.com). Stanford law professor Mark Lemley called the complaint potentially "a very big case" while noting that California law protects employee mobility (Source: reuters.com). M.G. Siegler argued the suit could sidetrack OpenAI's hardware ambitions for years (Source: spyglass.org), and a Wall Street Journal analysis published July 12, 2026 characterized the filing as Apple under Tim Cook betting that litigation can delay a rival from upending the iPhone era, invoking the "thermonuclear" framing associated with Apple's earlier smartphone patent wars (Source: wsj.com). A TechCrunch analysis published July 19, 2026 examined whether the suit could delay OpenAI's first hardware device — reportedly a screenless mobile speaker — and complicate the IPO OpenAI confidentially filed on June 8, 2026 (Source: techcrunch.com).
Procedural history
The complaint was filed on July 10, 2026 (Source: courtlistener.com). No responsive pleading or scheduling order had been reported as of July 15, 2026; OpenAI's July 14 statement disputing the complaint's merit came outside the docket (Source: techcrunch.com). On July 17, 2026 it became public that Apple had sent legal preservation letters to roughly 40 former Apple employees now working at OpenAI, instructing them to preserve materials relevant to the case (Source: macrumors.com; ft.com).
Apple sought a preliminary injunction and expedited discovery in a filing that became public on August 4, 2026. It said its continuing investigation has so far identified eleven former Apple employees beyond the two named defendants — OpenAI senior systems engineer Chang Liu and Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan — who may have been witnesses or otherwise involved, alongside others named in the original complaint such as OpenAI employee Yu-Ting Peng. The filing states that one former employee "took screenshots of confidential Apple documents relating to an unannounced Apple product before an interview at OpenAI," and that after the complaint was filed multiple former Apple employees now at OpenAI reached out about returning Apple-issued devices they had kept. Discovery is sought from Liu and Tan, from OpenAI and its foundation, and from io, the device startup co-founded by former Apple design lead Jony Ive. OpenAI replied in a blog post that the injunction request is "both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets" (Source: techcrunch.com).
OpenAI moved to dismiss on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, in a 31-page filing arguing that "Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent and retaining its employees, and its failures to integrate AI into its products." Variations of the word "fail" appear nearly 50 times in the filing. OpenAI's counter-allegations are that Apple reviewed personal iMessages left on company devices and created confusion by encouraging employees to use personal iCloud accounts for work. The filing states that more than 400 of Apple's former employees have joined OpenAI, a figure attributed to Apple's own allegation (Source: axios.com).
The August 4 reply was a post titled "Apple is getting this wrong," in which OpenAI released private emails and messages and called the suit "careless, aggressive, and oddly personal." OpenAI states that Apple's outside lawyers emailed the wrong individual after confusing "two Asian last names," conceding it only after OpenAI raised the point, and that a conversation Apple attributed to OpenAI's general counsel "never happened." It says Apple then went silent for five months before suing, and published messages it says show Apple staff asking Chang Liu for help locating files and answering technical questions after his January 22 departure. Apple's preliminary-injunction motion argues that if its trade secrets "get embedded in [OpenAI's] products and operations" Apple could compete in consumer hardware "against its own trade secret technologies" (Source: fortune.com).
The complaint (Apple Inc. v. Liu, Tan, OpenAI and io Products — Complaint (July 2026)) pleads misappropriation under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1836 et seq., with supplemental state-law claims and breach of the Intellectual Property Agreement each Individual Defendant executed. Apple frames the asserted secrets as spanning its hardware operations — "manufacturing and supply chain innovations, and a global network of strategic partnerships" that "enable Apple to bring new products with unique features to consumers at extraordinary speed and scale" — rather than software or model technology. On the specific conduct, it alleges Chang Liu left in January 2026, did not respond when Apple sought a confidentiality reminder, exit interview, and device return, failed to return an Apple-issued laptop previously authenticated to Apple's network, and left a message on a former colleague's Apple laptop saying "I still have another computer." Apple states its investigation is ongoing and that Liu "has taken steps to hide the full extent of his theft."
Relationships
- litigates: Apple — plaintiff
- litigates: OpenAI — defendant (with OpenAI Foundation and io Products)
- related: Taiwan v. Chen Li-ming et al. (TSMC 2nm Trade-Secret Case) — parallel trade-secret enforcement in the AI supply chain
- related: Musk v. Altman (and OpenAI / Microsoft / Brockman) — prior high-profile litigation against OpenAI in N.D. Cal.