MacBook analysis adds evidence to Apple’s OpenAI suit

Apple says former hardware engineer Chang Liu ran a confidential Apple circuit schematic through LTspice, a standard circuit simulation tool, in March, while he was working at OpenAI. It also says that around the same time he told people his AI “agent” had learned to run the program and review the results. Both claims are in a filing Apple made on August 31 in its trade secrets suit against OpenAI, reported by 9to5Mac. Apple says they come from an “initial forensic analysis” of the MacBook Liu used after he left the company.

Bloomberg led with the sharpest allegation: Apple says OpenAI is destroying evidence. The filing itself has a narrower job. Apple wants the judge to grant expedited discovery, meaning early document production and early depositions of key OpenAI employees and executives, and it calls what it found on the laptop “shocking evidence.” Apple lists four findings:

• “Mr. Liu not only downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic but also used it in his work at OpenAI”
• “Far from his unauthorized access to Apple’s third-party cloud storage being unknown to him, Mr. Liu and others at OpenAI were well-aware of that access”
• “Mr. Liu, upon learning of Apple’s internal investigation of him, sent instructions for destroying evidence to an OpenAI colleague who confirmed she would comply”
• “Mr. Liu used a tool in his work at OpenAI that has the same name as an internal Apple engineering application used for Apple development work”

The filing does not name the colleague or the tool.

Apple says it learned about the schematic because Liu used it on a Mac mini, and that Mac mini later synced through iCloud to the MacBook he had taken from Apple. Liu kept that Apple-issued laptop after he left and Apple got it back after filing suit, MacRumors reported. According to Apple, Liu’s lawyers handed it over only recently. So the clearest piece of evidence came from a machine that already belonged to Apple, and it reached that machine only through a sync from a second computer Apple has not examined. Apple now wants access to the Mac mini too, and MacRumors says it also wants to look at other devices Liu still has.

The agent detail is where the filing goes past an ordinary trade secrets dispute. Per MacRumors, Liu wrote that his agent “learned how to run LTspice, look at result, tune compensation parameter,” and that this cut a task from a day to two hours. The same outlet says Apple puts the download of the schematic in March, two months after Liu left. Apple’s legal argument is that when trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that learns from it, that learning “may create irreversible and continually propagating uses of the trade secret.” On that reading, the harm is not limited to one file on one laptop. It extends to whatever the agent kept from it, and Apple uses that to argue the court should move faster rather than wait for ordinary discovery.

Apple also goes after how OpenAI’s side has handled the laptop. It says the defendants chose not to inspect the MacBook and instead decided to “advance theories that the device’s data disproves.”

Who Chang Liu is

Liu was a senior system electrical engineer at Apple and left for OpenAI in January. The original complaint alleged that he exploited a security bug to download confidential engineering files after he had already left. CNN reported that, according to the suit, Liu ignored Apple’s attempts to get him to sign a confidentiality reminder, schedule an exit interview and confirm he had returned his devices, and that he got into a former colleague’s work computer after leaving. The complaint, as CNN described it, said he downloaded “dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous, detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data.”

That earlier account is mostly about access and downloads. The August 31 filing adds a claim of use: the schematic going into a simulation run as part of his OpenAI work.

The case so far

Apple sued in federal court in Northern California in July, alleging trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract. The defendants are OpenAI, Liu, OpenAI hardware chief Tang Tan and io Products, the Jony Ive startup OpenAI bought for $6.4 billion when it moved into hardware. Ive himself is not a defendant and is not accused of wrongdoing. The complaint also alleges that Tan, a former Apple vice president, told job candidates still working at Apple to bring “actual parts” to interviews for “show and tell” sessions, CNBC reported, and that OpenAI coached departing Apple employees on getting around security processes on their way out.

A few weeks after filing, Apple moved for a preliminary injunction to keep OpenAI from using its trade secrets and asked for expedited discovery at the same time. It pressed the discovery request again the week before this filing. The two companies were partners not long ago: in 2024 they agreed to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone’s operating system.

OpenAI has asked the court to dismiss the case, calling it “meritless,” and has publicly described it as “careless, aggressive and oddly personal.” The company says it does not “have, nor want, any of their trade secrets.” When the suit was first filed, OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets.”

Apple’s filing answers the charge that it is on a fishing trip:

This shocking evidence—which Defendants chose to ignore despite its availability—demonstrates why Apple urgently needs expedited discovery. The MacBook represents the very limited information Defendants provided so far (and only after weeks of delay), and shows Apple is not conducting ‘fishing expeditions’ but that its trade secrets are being used and evidence is being destroyed.