Apple sued OpenAI and two former employees in California on Friday, accusing them of stealing the iPhone maker’s trade secrets to benefit OpenAI's move into consumer hardware.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, targets former senior system electrical engineer of Apple Chang Liu and Tang Tan, former vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch.

The lawsuit alleged the former employees stole such secrets as product designs, manufacturing processes and supply chain strategies to bring to OpenAI, and noted that 400 former Apple employees now work at the company, according to NBC News.

Apple alleged Liu failed to return a company-issued work laptop and later used an authentication bug to access Apple’s internal network, where he downloaded “dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files.”

The lawsuit also accused Tan of “methodically using Apple’s confidential information to benefit OpenAI” by sending himself information about Apple suppliers and internal industry summaries before he left. 

He also allegedly extracted information from other employees during interviews by seeking updates on codenamed projects.

Apple said it reached out to OpenAI about the issue when it noticed that its technologies were making their way into OpenAI’s products, but never heard back about its concerns. 

The iPhone maker is requesting a preliminary injunction in the case that would require the defendants to preserve evidence, cease using any of Apple’s technologies and return trade secrets to Apple.

The lawsuit comes despite a 2024 deal that brought OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT to its devices through its “Apple Intelligence” technology. 

OpenAI has not publicly commented on the lawsuit so far. 

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.