Holy crap, the corporate war has begun! Apple has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against OpenAI, io Products, and two former Apple employees, Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan, accusing them of systematically acquiring and using Apple’s trade secrets to accelerate their consumer hardware business. Case number: 5:26-cv-07078. Apple claims that after Liu left the company, he failed to return at least one company computer and exploited an unknown authentication vulnerability at the time to re-enter Apple’s network and download dozens of confidential hardware files. Apple also accuses OpenAI’s hardware head, Tang Tan, of using Apple’s internal project codenames during recruitment to probe for unreleased products and asking candidates to bring CAD files, prototypes, and “actual parts” for demonstrations. The scope of trade secrets listed by Apple goes far beyond product appearance, including circuit and power design, AI and hardware integration, electromagnetic interference testing, custom manufacturing equipment, metal alloys, DFM, component suppliers, failure analysis, lifecycle simulations, and global supply chain coordination. Apple claims this knowledge stems from “hundreds of billions of dollars and decades” of investment.