Apple’s trade-secrets dispute with OpenAI is moving toward a July 19, 2027 trial, but the companies are already litigating a more immediate question: whose version of the employees’ departures should the public believe?¹

The case centers on Chang Liu, a former iPhone engineer, and Tang Tan, Apple’s longtime former design executive who is now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer. Apple alleges the pair carried “secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products” into OpenAI’s push to build hardware. It says Liu retained a company computer, accessed Apple storage after leaving and downloaded confidential files; it also alleges Tan sought confidential details from Apple employees being recruited by OpenAI.²

Apple’s position hardened when it sought a preliminary injunction Monday, asking the court to bar Liu, Tan and OpenAI from accessing, acquiring, using or disclosing the disputed information while the lawsuit proceeds.²

OpenAI answered not with a court filing but with a public post, pointedly titled “Apple is getting this wrong.”³ The company called Apple’s injunction request “based on false information” and “completely unnecessary,” insisting it does not have—and does not want—Apple’s trade secrets. “We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier,” it said.²

OpenAI’s counterargument is that Apple failed to remove former employees’ system access, creating what it describes as a common “residual access” problem rather than evidence of theft. It also says Tan repeatedly told staff that they “must not use” confidential information from other companies, and argues Apple initially sent inquiries to the wrong person after confusing similar surnames.²

With trial still more than a year away, neither side has conceded the central point. Apple frames the case as protection of its unreleased work; OpenAI frames it as an overreach built on Apple’s own administrative failures. A jury is now scheduled to decide which account holds up.¹