Apple says OpenAI dragged its feet handing over evidence in their trade secrets fight, and now wants a judge to speed things up.
In a Monday filing, Apple asked the court for "expedited discovery," arguing OpenAI only recently turned over a MacBook belonging to a former Apple employee central to the case. Apple claims the laptop contains discussions about destroying the kind of forensic data Apple needs for its lawsuit. That suit accuses OpenAI of stealing trade secrets to build an AI hardware device, built around three ex-Apple employees, including Chang Liu, who moved to OpenAI.
The request matters because discovery fights are where trade-secret cases are actually won or lost, long before anyone argues the merits. If Apple can show a court that evidence was deliberately deleted, it shifts the case from a dispute over facts to a dispute over conduct, which tends to go badly for the side accused of the deletion.
Hardware ambitions have a way of turning tech rivalries into courtroom dramas, and this one is shaping up to be less about chips and more about who forgot to keep their laptop.