Apple tells the court OpenAI's objections were really new arguments, ahead of the 14 October injunction hearingApple tells the court OpenAI's objections were really new arguments, ahead of the 14 October injunction hearing

Apple filed a response on 5 October accusing OpenAI and the other defendants in its trade secrets lawsuit of using an objection to argue the case again.

The suit, Apple Inc. v. Liu in the Northern District of California, accuses former Apple engineers Chang Liu and Tang Tan, the OpenAI entities and io Products, OpenAI's hardware company, of misappropriating Apple's trade secrets. Apple is asking for a preliminary injunction. The four-page filing, document 173, lists the hearing on that motion for 14 October at 9am before Judge Edward J. Davila.

How the dispute got here

Apple's reply brief on the injunction came with five expert declarations, totalling 126 pages, MacTech reports. On 25 September the defendants objected under the court's Civil Local Rule 7-3(d)(1), which lets a party object to new evidence in a reply, and asked the court to strike two of the declarations and disregard other material, 9to5Mac reported at the time.

Apple's answer is that the objection went too far. The rule says such a filing may not include further argument on the motion, and Apple says the defendants used it to dispute the merits, including whether its expert Dr Runge had a basis for his analysis. It calls a new eight-paragraph declaration from Liu "the most egregious overreach". According to Apple, Liu uses it to explain why he erased the data on his iMac before returning it to Apple, to argue about text messages with an Apple supplier, and to explain his use of a confidential Apple file. Apple adds that the filing and declaration run to nine pages against a five-page limit.

What is Apple asking the judge to do?

Not to strike the defendants' material in return. Apple calls it a sur-reply filed without the court's permission, but says that because the defendants have now answered its new evidence, the court should refuse to strike anything and decide the injunction on the full record, including both sides' late material. None of the outlets' summaries we read put that request at the centre, and it is the operative part of the filing.

Our take

This is procedure, and it is still revealing. Apple's tactical choice is the interesting part. Rather than ask for the defendants' material to be thrown out, it accepts it and uses it to argue that its own experts should stay in. That is a party confident about the record: it is saying, in effect, let the judge read everything. The cost for OpenAI is that its own new testimony, including Liu's account of the wiped iMac, is now part of what the judge weighs.

The detail with the most weight for the hearing is the wiped iMac. Nobody outside the case has seen Liu's explanation, and a reasonable explanation may exist, but an engineer erasing a work computer before handing it back is the kind of fact injunction rulings turn on. Apple has form here: it is also pursuing an Apple Watch trade secrets case against Oppo that a judge has allowed to proceed, and it treats departing hardware staff as a security problem as much as an HR one.

It is also not the only courtroom the two companies share. OpenAI, a partner in Apple Intelligence, has told a separate court that ChatGPT in Siri dramatically underperformed its forecasts. APPDOOK's reading is that the relationship is now adversarial in public on two fronts, which makes the ChatGPT integration in Siri worth watching as closely as the ruling. The hearing is on 14 October. An injunction would restrict what OpenAI's hardware team can build while the case continues; a refusal would not end the suit.