On Monday, Apple asked a U.S. court for a temporary restraining order that would bar two former employees and OpenAI from accessing, using or disclosing the company's confidential information. The filing is a follow-up to a lawsuit Apple filed last month.
Apple alleges that the two former employees named in the suit — Chang Liu, a former senior power systems engineer, and Tang Jev Tan, a former vice president responsible for product design on iPhone and Apple Watch — provided protected, confidential materials to OpenAI that the AI company then used in its own hardware development. In its court filing Apple wrote that it would suffer "irreparable harm" if a temporary order were not granted.
Alongside the restraining order request, Apple asked the court for expedited discovery to obtain documents related to the allegedly misused protected information and to take witness testimony. Apple requested the testimony of the two former employees named in the case, as well as one OpenAI employee and another unnamed former Apple worker.
OpenAI responded in a blog post Monday evening, denying the allegations and calling Apple's request false and baseless. OpenAI said it does not possess Apple trade secrets and is not seeking to obtain them.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, has implications beyond the individual employees. Analysts cited in reporting say the dispute concerns control over future AI-based consumer devices that move beyond traditional apps and operating systems. They note that if OpenAI were to develop its own smartphone or other consumer hardware, it could pose competitive risk to Apple's flagship product, the iPhone.
Further clarification of the claims and evidence will come through the court process and the parties' filings. This account is based on reporting by Reuters.
(The article was finalized by a human editor; an AI assistant contributed to its preparation.)
