{"id":3491765,"date":"2026-09-01T00:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T00:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/01\/apple-presents-stunning-proof-against-ex-employee-charged-with-pilfering-company-information-for-openai\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T00:13:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T00:13:00","slug":"apple-presents-stunning-proof-against-ex-employee-charged-with-pilfering-company-information-for-openai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/01\/apple-presents-stunning-proof-against-ex-employee-charged-with-pilfering-company-information-for-openai\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple presents \u2018stunning proof\u2019 against ex-employee charged with pilfering company information for OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In its lawsuit against OpenAI, Apple has presented what it describes as \u201cshocking evidence\u201d 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 \u2014 who is currently employed at OpenAI \u2014 submitted Liu\u2019s prior Apple work laptop for examination earlier this month.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cwell-aware\u201d of Liu\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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 \u2018fishing expeditions\u2019 but rather that its trade secrets are being utilized and evidence is being obliterated,\u201d the filing states.<\/p>\n

Although this new evidence has been redacted from public sight, prior submissions from Apple have featured text messages from Liu \u2014 which he adorned with \u201ccrying laughing\u201d emojis \u2014 indicating he was aware of still having access to Apple documents.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cApple now attempts to deflect the blame to \u2018residual access,\u2019 but they fail to mention that this is a common issue at Apple, resulting from their inadequate management of system access when employees depart,\u201d OpenAI stated in a blog post earlier this month.<\/p>\n

However, Apple contends that Liu maintained access because he \u201cexploited a rare, previously unknown authentication vulnerability.\u201d<\/p>\n

TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comments regarding Apple\u2019s latest allegations.<\/p>\n

Apple is pursuing a preliminary injunction \u2014 a court directive intending to prevent OpenAI from developing hardware based on Apple\u2019s technology during the ongoing case \u2014 as well as expedited discovery, a sped-up procedure for collecting evidence, since the company claims that additional former employees may also be implicated.<\/p>\n

According to Apple\u2019s initial submission, over 400 former Apple employees are now employed at OpenAI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When you make a purchase through links within our articles, we may receive a small commission. This does not influence our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/div>\n
\n

In its lawsuit against OpenAI, Apple has presented what it describes as \u201cshocking evidence\u201d 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 \u2014 who is currently employed at OpenAI \u2014 submitted Liu\u2019s prior Apple work laptop for examination earlier this month.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cwell-aware\u201d of Liu\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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 \u2018fishing expeditions\u2019 but rather that its trade secrets are being utilized and evidence is being obliterated,\u201d the filing states.<\/p>\n

Although this new evidence has been redacted from public sight, prior submissions from Apple have featured text messages from Liu \u2014 which he adorned with \u201ccrying laughing\u201d emojis \u2014 indicating he was aware of still having access to Apple documents.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cApple now attempts to deflect the blame to \u2018residual access,\u2019 but they fail to mention that this is a common issue at Apple, resulting from their inadequate management of system access when employees depart,\u201d OpenAI stated in a blog post earlier this month.<\/p>\n

However, Apple contends that Liu maintained access because he \u201cexploited a rare, previously unknown authentication vulnerability.\u201d<\/p>\n

TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comments regarding Apple\u2019s latest allegations.<\/p>\n

Apple is pursuing a preliminary injunction \u2014 a court directive intending to prevent OpenAI from developing hardware based on Apple\u2019s technology during the ongoing case \u2014 as well as expedited discovery, a sped-up procedure for collecting evidence, since the company claims that additional former employees may also be implicated.<\/p>\n

According to Apple\u2019s initial submission, over 400 former Apple employees are now employed at OpenAI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When you make a purchase through links within our articles, we may receive a small commission. This does not influence our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3491766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3491765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3491765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3491765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3491765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3491766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3491765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3491765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3491765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}