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Apple’s trade secrets case against OpenAI is expanding in scope. In a new California court filing, Apple claims its ongoing investigation has identified 11 additional former employees — beyond Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan, the two named in the original July complaint — who may have been witnesses or otherwise involved in taking confidential Apple information to OpenAI.

Apple is requesting expedited discovery from Liu, Tan, OpenAI, the OpenAI Foundation, and io, the device startup co-founded by Jony Ive that was named in the original suit.

What the Filing Alleges

The court document contains specific examples of additional conduct Apple says it has uncovered:

• One unnamed former Apple employee met with Liu and Yu-Ting Peng (an OpenAI employee also named in the original complaint) before Peng’s interview at OpenAI, and during that meeting discussed Apple proprietary information about unannounced products.
• A second unnamed former employee took screenshots of confidential Apple documents relating to an unannounced product before attending an OpenAI interview.
• After Apple filed its original complaint, multiple former Apple employees now working at OpenAI proactively reached out to discuss returning Apple-issued work devices they had kept when they left the company.

Apple is arguing those facts give it good cause to seek accelerated access to evidence before the case proceeds. A motion for a preliminary injunction — which would seek to stop OpenAI from developing products based on Apple technology, including io hardware — is also pending.

Stakes

The scope of the original lawsuit was already significant. Tang Yew Tan held the title Chief Hardware Officer at Apple before moving to OpenAI. Liu was a senior systems engineer. The io startup, co-founded by Ive, has been positioned as OpenAI’s first major hardware product, built on design principles and potentially technology developed at Apple.

If the expanded investigation holds up, the alleged misconduct involved coordinated disclosure of pre-release Apple product information across multiple employees and across job interviews — not isolated data exfiltration by two individuals.

OpenAI has publicly disputed Apple’s characterization of events. A preliminary injunction, if granted, would be a significant constraint on io’s development timeline.

Context

Apple sent legal letters to dozens of OpenAI employees in July and filed the original trade secrets suit shortly after. This filing marks the first time Apple has presented specific factual allegations about additional employees and requested court-supervised discovery to surface more.

The case sits at the intersection of two escalating conflicts: Apple’s fractured partnership with OpenAI and the broader competition between Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT on iOS and desktop.