A federal select on October 13, 2026 granted Apple restricted expedited discovery in its trade-secret lawsuit in the direction of OpenAI, ordering the defendants to offer forensic machine photos, provides used to interview Apple job candidates, and private messages between two figures inside the dispute.
Discovery the Courtroom docket Granted
Resolve Edward J. Davila of the U.S. District Courtroom docket for the Northern District of California granted partially Apple’s motion in Apple Inc. v. Liu, the San Jose case naming former Apple staff Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC, and io Merchandise LLC. The defendants ought to reply to three doc requests inside 14 days, or inside 5 days for provides already collected inside the litigation.
The first request covers all forensic photos the defendants have collected in reference to the topic materials of Apple’s claims, along with photos acknowledged in reveals to the August 31, 2026 and September 11, 2026 declarations of Andrew Crain, or in some other case relied on by Crain.
The second request, as modified by the court docket docket, requires manufacturing of all paperwork used to info or conduct interviews of candidates from Apple for OpenAI’s Shopper {{Hardware}} Merchandise Group (along with its Shopper {{Hardware}} Product Group and Robotics Group), along with checklists, guides, instructions, manuals, and scripts. Moreover coated are Technical Deep Dive reveals or completely different technical reveals summarizing or memorializing the content material materials of those interviews with Apple staff, or any reference to Apple know-how or components.
The third request requires Liu to offer all conversations on the LINE messaging app between him and Yu-Ting (“Alyssa”) Peng since January 1, 2026, along with the conversations containing the messages cited in Liu’s August 31, 2026 declaration and its related exhibit.
Davila granted Apple the depositions of Liu, Tan, and Peng, to occur inside 30 days after Apple receives all responses to the permitted requests. He moreover granted a corporate-designee deposition of OpenAI Foundation (beforehand OpenAI, Inc.), OpenAI Group PBC, and io Merchandise LLC (beforehand io Merchandise, Inc.) on the positions, roles, and duties inside OpenAI of the designated witnesses, Tan, Liu, Peng, and a redacted explicit particular person, subject to the equivalent 30-day window.
Requests Denied or Deferred
The court docket docket denied expedited remedy of Apple’s request for all paperwork related to OpenAI evaluation and development on metal finishes, power administration, or battery efficiency for shopper {{hardware}} merchandise, discovering it larger suited to weird deserves discovery. It moreover denied, for now, Apple’s request to depose a fourth explicit particular person listed in its narrowed requests.
Davila deferred ruling on all requests and deposition topics incorporating the time interval “Apple Originated Information,” which he found amorphous as at current outlined. If Apple intends to pursue these requests, it ought to verify with the defendants and submit a additional tailored definition inside 5 days for the court docket docket to guage.
The select declined to hold that the permitted depositions come together with the deposition limits inside the federal pointers, writing that the court docket docket will entertain future motions to exceed these limits as essential. Discovering the motion acceptable for disposition with out oral argument under the district’s native pointers, he vacated the listening to that had been scheduled for October 14, 2026.
The Lawsuit Behind the Motion
Apple filed its criticism on July 10, 2026, and the case was reassigned to Davila on July 23, 2026, in keeping with the case docket. The criticism alleges commerce secret misappropriation under the Defend Commerce Secrets and techniques and methods Act, the federal trade-secret statute, and breach of the particular person defendants’ Psychological Property Agreements.
As recited inside the ruling, Apple alleges that an investigation uncovered a pattern of commerce secret theft by former Apple staff now working at OpenAI, along with use of Apple’s proprietary information to assist OpenAI’s {{hardware}} development, to appreciate insider info all through interviews of Apple staff considering jobs at OpenAI, and to instruct new OpenAI hires on avoiding scrutiny as soon as they depart Apple. Apple extra alleges the corporate defendants acted in dwell efficiency as an enterprise exploiting its confidential information to advance OpenAI’s efforts to enter the patron {{hardware}} market.
Apple sought expedited discovery on August 4, 2026, after shifting for a preliminary injunction on August 3, 2026. The defendants opposed the invention motion on August 18, Apple replied on August 25, and Apple filed a supplemental short-term on August 31 presenting its forensic educated’s consider of Liu’s MacBook, to which the defendants responded September 11 with their very personal educated’s findings, the docket entries current. After a September 14 standing conference, the occasions filed a joint submission containing Apple’s narrowed requests on September 18, 2026.
The Courtroom docket’s Good-Set off Analysis
The order applies the Ninth Circuit’s good-cause customary, which weighs whether or not or not a preliminary injunction is pending, the breadth of the requests, their perform, the burden of compliance, and the way in which far upfront of the usual discovery course of the request received right here.
On the first problem, the court docket docket agreed with Apple that because of forensic photos of Liu’s devices had change right into a distinguished ingredient of the pending preliminary-injunction motion, a minimum of a couple of of the requested discovery bore a clear relationship to that motion. It rejected the defendants’ argument, constructed on Liu’s January 2026 departure from Apple, that Apple’s delay in on the lookout for help alone justified denial.
On breadth and burden, the court docket docket found the narrowed requests remained broad, pointing to the “Apple Originated Information” definition and the research-and-development request. It agreed with the defendants that some requests had been sweeping adequate that their suggestion that Apple meant to rummage through a competitor’s recordsdata was not solely frivolous, whereas noting Apple had already outfitted a preliminary trade-secret identification.
The order recounts the occasions’ competing forensic positions with out weighing them at this stage: Apple’s educated concluded Liu used an Apple trade-secret file in March 2026 and knowledgeable Peng in June 2026 to have Apple-issued devices restored and to start out out using them additional, whereas the defendants’ educated found no proof Liu used the file in reference to any AI platform, and the defendants pressured that Apple does not argue one thing was actually deleted or restored. The court docket docket credited Apple’s place that forensic artifacts corresponding to logs, metadata, and utilization info are transient and liable to loss, and agreed early discovery is required to uncover the scope of any alleged misappropriation, quoting the joint submission’s warning that the alleged secrets and techniques and methods might turn into “so deeply entangled with OpenAI’s {{hardware}} merchandise or completely different evaluation and development efforts that the damage cannot be undone.”
The court docket docket found the request was not made significantly upfront of the usual discovery course of and concluded that good set off supported granting a additional restricted mannequin of Apple’s narrowed requests.
