Apple has recently made significant progress in its trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI. While Apple has been continuously requesting the court to expedite the evidence collection process, it conducted an initial investigation of a MacBook used by Chang Liu, a former senior systems electrical engineer at Apple, after he left the company. During this inspection, four highly indicative key pieces of evidence were found.

According to newly submitted court documents from Apple, this laptop, which was recently returned by Liu's lawyer, exposed multiple violations. First, Liu not only downloaded a confidential circuit schematic of Apple using a security vulnerability before leaving the company, but also directly used the file in his actual work at OpenAI. Second, the evidence shows that Liu and several colleagues at OpenAI were fully aware of this unauthorized access to Apple's third-party cloud storage, and were not ignorant of it. Third, when Liu learned that Apple was conducting an internal investigation on him, he quickly instructed a colleague at OpenAI to destroy related evidence, and the colleague confirmed that he would comply. Finally, an engineering tool used by Liu during his time at OpenAI has a name identical to Apple's internal application used for development work.

Further forensic details show that Liu used this confidential circuit schematic in March this year to run a simulation program in an electrical engineering tool called LTspice. At the same time, related communication records show that he had informed his team that his AI "agent" had learned to run LTspice and independently review the simulation results. Based on this, Apple issued a strong warning, stating that when core trade secrets are input into an AI agent or model capable of continuous learning, this learning process could lead to irreversible and ongoing leakage of trade secrets.

Additionally, through technical means, Apple discovered that Liu left traces of using the circuit schematic on his MacBook because he had opened the file on a Mac mini, and the device later synchronized data with his带走的 MacBook via iCloud. Currently, Apple is further seeking access to this Mac mini.

In response to the defendant's previous attempt to dismiss the lawsuit and ignore it, Apple believes that the "astonishing evidence" extracted from the MacBook has completely shattered the so-called "fishing investigation" nature, strongly supporting the urgency and necessity of expediting the evidence collection process. As the case proceeds, this legal dispute involving large model trade secrets and former employee misconduct is moving toward a more in-depth direction.