Judge widens Apple's early access to evidence in its trade secrets suit against OpenAI

A federal judge in California has widened the early evidence Apple can obtain in its trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI. Judge Edward Davila adopted a narrower definition of "Apple Originated Information", agreed between Apple and the defendants, and used it to grant several discovery requests he had put off earlier. The defendants have up to 14 days to produce records and answer Apple's questions.

“careless, aggressive and oddly personal”

OpenAI, describing Apple's charges, as printed by Engadget · engadget.com ↗

The new order opens up records on how Apple's former employees handled confidential information and used AI tools, along with OpenAI's recruitment and hardware development practices. Requests about OpenAI's own devices and accounts, its internal investigations and any deletion of Apple's confidential material were denied. Two requests for corporate testimony were judged too broad for now.

It builds on a 13 October order that partly granted Apple's expedited discovery, with early access to selected internal documents, forensic evidence and employee testimony. That order authorised depositions of Chang Liu, Tang Tan and Alyssa Peng, plus corporate witnesses from OpenAI and io Products, within 30 days of the responses.

Apple sued in July, accusing the ex-employees of using its confidential information to help OpenAI's consumer hardware effort. It says Liu downloaded dozens of files, including a circuit schematic, from its cloud storage and used it for simulations at OpenAI.

OpenAI denies wrongdoing and argues that Apple has not named specific stolen trade secrets in its motion to dismiss. Davila has yet to rule on that motion or on the injunction.