In its lawsuit against OpenAI, Apple has presented what it describes as “shocking evidence” to support its claims that former employees misappropriated trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI. These details surfaced after the legal representative of former Apple employee Chang Liu — who is currently employed at OpenAI — submitted Liu’s prior Apple work laptop for examination earlier this month.

Apple now asserts that Liu utilized a confidential Apple circuit diagram in his role at OpenAI, in addition to a tool that shares a name with an internal Apple engineering application. The company alleges that OpenAI was “well-aware” of Liu’s access to Apple information, and that Liu enlisted the help of OpenAI colleague Yu-Ting Peng to assist in destroying evidence in June upon discovering that Apple was investigating him.

“The MacBook represents the very limited information Defendants have provided to date (and only after weeks of delay), and demonstrates that Apple is not engaged in ‘fishing expeditions’ but rather that its trade secrets are being utilized and evidence is being obliterated,” the filing states.

Although this new evidence has been redacted from public sight, prior submissions from Apple have featured text messages from Liu — which he adorned with “crying laughing” emojis — indicating he was aware of still having access to Apple documents.

OpenAI has previously defended Liu by asserting that he accessed Apple files only after his employment ended to assist former colleagues who sought his help. “Apple now attempts to deflect the blame to ‘residual access,’ but they fail to mention that this is a common issue at Apple, resulting from their inadequate management of system access when employees depart,” OpenAI stated in a blog post earlier this month.

However, Apple contends that Liu maintained access because he “exploited a rare, previously unknown authentication vulnerability.”

TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comments regarding Apple’s latest allegations.

Apple is pursuing a preliminary injunction — a court directive intending to prevent OpenAI from developing hardware based on Apple’s technology during the ongoing case — as well as expedited discovery, a sped-up procedure for collecting evidence, since the company claims that additional former employees may also be implicated.

According to Apple’s initial submission, over 400 former Apple employees are now employed at OpenAI.