Apple and OpenAI head to court over injunction and dismissal bids

Apple and OpenAI were due in federal court on October 14, with Apple seeking a preliminary injunction and OpenAI and the other defendants asking the judge to dismiss Apple’s trade-secrets lawsuit.

At the hearing in San Jose, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila was set to consider two threshold questions: whether the defendants should face interim restrictions on acquiring or using information Apple says is confidential while the case proceeds, and whether Apple’s complaint should instead end at the pleading stage. The public docket lists the two pending motions. The dispute is separate from Florida’s request for court limits on OpenAI model development and ChatGPT behavior.

The latest procedural move came one day earlier. In an October 13 order, Davila found good cause for a limited version of Apple’s expedited-discovery requests but declined to grant the broader package Apple sought. Because the judge decided the discovery motion on the papers, the order vacated the October 14 hearing on that request. It did not vacate the separately scheduled hearing on the preliminary-injunction and dismissal motions.

The order requires the defendants to produce already-collected materials within five days and other covered material within 14 days. It covers specified forensic images; materials used to guide or memorialize interviews of Apple candidates for OpenAI consumer-hardware and robotics jobs; and LINE messages between former Apple employees Chang Liu and Alyssa Peng dating from January 1, 2026.

Davila also authorized expedited depositions of Liu, Tang Yew Tan and Peng, along with a corporate-representative deposition of OpenAI and io Products on specified roles and responsibilities. He denied an early deposition of a fourth person. The judge rejected expedited production of OpenAI research and development records concerning metal finishes, power management and battery functionality. He also deferred requests built around Apple’s broad definition of “Apple Originated Information” until Apple narrows that term.

Apple alleges that OpenAI used interviews with current and former Apple employees to solicit proprietary information, including requests for prototypes or other design artifacts, and that former employees used Apple information to help OpenAI’s hardware work. Those claims are contested and have not been proven. The discovery order expressly declined to weigh the parties’ competing forensic accounts and did not decide whether any trade secret was misappropriated.

OpenAI denies possessing or wanting Apple’s trade secrets and argues that Apple has not identified specific stolen secrets. It attributes the disputed access and communications to Apple’s security and offboarding practices and to contacts initiated by Apple employees.

Apple filed the lawsuit on July 10 and moved for a preliminary injunction on August 3. The defendants filed their dismissal motion on August 5. At the research cutoff of 16:03 UTC on October 14, no hearing transcript, minute entry, bench ruling or post-hearing order was available, so the outcome of either motion was unknown.