Filed July 10, 2026 in the Northern District of California, San Jose Division (No. 5:26-cv-07078), by Weil, Gotshal & Manges for Apple Inc.. See Apple v. OpenAI (trade secrets).
Parties and claims
Defendants are Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan (the "Individual Defendants"); OpenAI Foundation, formerly OpenAI, Inc., and OpenAI Group PBC (together "OpenAI"); and io Products, LLC, formerly io Products, Inc. — OpenAI's hardware venture. OpenAI and io are together the "Corporate Defendants."
Counts: trade secret misappropriation under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1836 et seq., plus state-law claims under supplemental jurisdiction, and breach of contract — each Individual Defendant having executed an Intellectual Property Agreement with Apple. Jury demanded.
Apple's one-sentence statement of the case: "This case is about Apple's former employees stealing Apple's trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI. Apple brings this suit to put a stop to it."
The asserted secrets
The complaint frames the protected subject matter as hardware operations rather than software or models. Apple describes "hundreds of billions of dollars and decades of effort in developing groundbreaking consumer hardware products like iPhone, Apple Watch, and MacBook, along with the business acumen and infrastructure to bring them to market at scale," yielding "engineering breakthroughs, manufacturing and supply chain innovations, and a global network of strategic partnerships — all built on confidentiality and trust."
Its characterization of the asserted secrets: "The trade secrets spanning Apple's hardware operations collectively constitute one of the most valuable intellectual assets in all of American business. They enable Apple to bring new products with unique features to consumers at extraordinary speed and scale."
That framing matters for the dispute's significance — the alleged appropriation concerns the ability to manufacture and ship consumer hardware at scale, which is the capability OpenAI's hardware venture would need and does not have.
The specific allegations
The conduct alleged against Liu is the most concrete part of the pleading. He "left in January 2026 to join OpenAI. When Apple contacted Mr. Liu to sign Apple's confidentiality reminder, schedule an exit interview, and confirm that he had returned his devices and complied with other exit procedures, Mr. Liu did not respond."
Apple states its investigation is incomplete — "Mr. Liu has taken steps to hide the full extent of his theft, which Apple is still investigating" — while pleading facts already found. Among them: "After leaving Apple, Mr. Liu failed to return an Apple-issued work laptop that he had previously authenticated to Apple's network," and, in a message left on a former colleague's Apple-issued laptop, said "I still have another computer" on which he planned to continue.
Standing of these allegations
This is a complaint. The allegations are unproven and the defendants' responses are not in the document. What it establishes is the shape of the dispute: a trade-secret action over hardware manufacturing and supply-chain knowledge, brought against an AI lab moving into devices, with individual employees as the alleged transmission path.
Relationships
- supports: Apple v. OpenAI (trade secrets) — the primary text behind that page
- related: Apple, OpenAI, AI Labor Disruption
- related: Taiwan v. Chen Li-ming et al. (TSMC 2nm Trade-Secret Case) — the other significant trade-secret matter in the AI hardware supply chain