Apple Tells Court OpenAI Broke the Rules of Its Own Evidence Fight in Trade-Secrets Case

CUPERTINO — Apple and OpenAI are now fighting over the rules of the fight itself. In the latest filing in Apple’s trade-secrets lawsuit against two former employees, OpenAI, and OpenAI’s hardware arm io Products, Apple accuses the defendants of violating the court’s limits on what can go into an objections filing — using a filing that was supposed to be a narrow protest about new evidence to relitigate the merits of the case and slip in new testimony of their own.

The case underneath the skirmish

At its core, Apple’s lawsuit alleges that former employees Chang Liu and Tang Tan misappropriated Apple trade secrets connected to OpenAI’s hardware development, and that OpenAI and io Products benefited. One active front of that lawsuit is Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction — a court order Apple says would keep its trade secrets from becoming further embedded in OpenAI’s hardware work while the case plays out. That request is what all the current motion practice is about.

The immediate sequence started when Apple filed a reply brief in support of the injunction, backed by five expert declarations. The defendants objected, accusing Apple of improperly introducing new evidence with that reply and asking the court to disregard some of the material. Apple has now fired back with its own response to those objections — and its central argument is that the defendants did not stop at objecting.

Rule 7-3(d)(1): the rule both sides now cite

The provision at issue is Rule 7-3(d)(1), which permits a party to object to new evidence in a reply brief but bars using that filing to argue the merits. The rule provides that an objections filing “may not include further argument on the motion,” Apple said in its new filing — and its position is that the defendants blew straight through that restriction, using their objections filing to relitigate the merits of Apple’s motion for a preliminary injunction rather than confining themselves to identifying new evidence.

Apple points to specifics: the defendants, in its telling, disputed whether Apple’s expert Dr. Runge has a basis to offer his analysis, quibbled over whether he adequately responds to contrary evidence, and argued that certain Apple information is actually public. None of that, Apple says, is an objection to evidence. As Apple’s filing puts it, argument about whether Apple’s positions are unsupported or contradicted by other testimony “is not an objection to evidence.”

There is also a size complaint. The same rule, Apple’s filing adds — again quoting it directly — provides that objections “may not exceed 5 pages of text,” while the defendants’ filing plus the new declaration together run 9 pages — nearly double the limit.

The eight paragraphs Apple calls “the most egregious overreach”

The centerpiece of Apple’s complaint is a brand-new declaration from Liu — eight paragraphs of fresh testimony that Apple describes as “the most egregious overreach” in the defendants’ filing. According to Apple, the declaration does three things, none of which belongs in an objections filing:

First, it offers Liu’s excuses for why he “wiped” — Apple’s word, glossed as erased — all the data from his iMac before returning it to the company. Second, it argues about the meaning of certain text messages between Liu and one of Apple’s suppliers. Third, it tries to explain away Liu’s use of one of Apple’s confidential computer files. Apple’s view: all of this is substantive argument about the merits, smuggled into a procedural objection.

There is a wrinkle the defendants will surely lean on. When they submitted Liu’s declaration, they said the court should only consider it if it also decided to consider the Apple evidence they were challenging — a conditional offer, not a straightforward submission. Apple’s answer is that the condition no longer matters: because the defendants went ahead and presented new arguments of their own, the filing is “more in the nature of a ‘sur-reply’ rather than an objection,” the company said — and the defendants never sought leave to file a sur-reply.

What Apple wants the judge to do

Apple’s requested outcome is a tidy symmetry: deny the defendants’ request to strike any of Apple’s reply evidence, and decide the preliminary injunction motion on the full record — Apple’s reply arguments and evidence plus the new arguments and evidence the defendants slipped into their objections filing. Apple’s logic is that the defendants have, by filing as they did, “adequately answered” any new evidence in Apple’s reply, so there is no longer any unfairness for the court to cure by striking things.

The court is scheduled to hear arguments on Apple’s preliminary injunction request on October 14 — a date that now looks like it will resolve not just whether Apple gets its injunction, but which version of the evidentiary record the judge will be weighing.

Why this procedural war matters

Objections to new evidence in reply briefs are routine motion practice, and judges dispose of them every day. What makes this exchange notable is what it signals about the stakes. Apple is fighting hard to keep its expert evidence in the record because the preliminary injunction is, for practical purposes, the case: if Apple can freeze OpenAI’s use of the disputed information now, it buys years of leverage. OpenAI, meanwhile, is fighting just as hard to narrow what the judge may consider, because the narrower the record, the harder the injunction is to get.

The subtext is the AI hardware race itself. OpenAI’s move into devices — the reason Apple’s trade-secret claims are tied to hardware development at all — is the most direct competitive threat Cupertino’s hardware franchise has faced from the AI labs. That is why a discovery fight about wiped iMacs and supplier text messages is being litigated with the intensity usually reserved for the merits. For the people who left Apple’s orbit for OpenAI’s hardware bet, October 14 will be the first real test of whether that bet can proceed unencumbered. OpenAI’s culture wars are playing out on multiple fronts — this one just happens to be in federal court.