Apple has sent legal letters to about 40 people who used to work at Apple and now work at OpenAI, telling them to save any documents and messages related to an ongoing legal dispute over trade secrets between the two companies (Financial Times).

Trade secrets are confidential business information — things like product designs, supplier lists, or manufacturing processes — that give a company a competitive edge and are protected by law.

The letters were reported on July 17, 2026. They step up a lawsuit Apple filed one week earlier. On July 10, Apple sued OpenAI in a federal court in California, claiming that former Apple employees took proprietary product designs, supplier information, and other trade secrets with them when they left Apple to join OpenAI (CNBC; MacRumors). The lawsuit names two OpenAI employees as defendants along with OpenAI itself (Financial Times).

Apple's complaint goes beyond saying that departing employees carried confidential information out the door. Apple alleges that OpenAI actively coached departing employees on how to get around Apple's security processes when leaving (CNBC). Apple has also asked the court for an injunction — a legal order that would require OpenAI to stop using any Apple information while developing its AI hardware device (MacRumors).

OpenAI has dismissed the lawsuit as meritless, meaning it considers the claims baseless (MacRumors). According to The New York Times, OpenAI had been considering legal action against Apple as of May 14, 2026, weeks before Apple filed its own suit (New York Times.

The scale of talent movement between the two companies frames the dispute. More than 400 former Apple employees now work for OpenAI (Reuters). The 40 people who received letters represent about ten percent of that group, suggesting Apple is casting a wide net in gathering evidence rather than focusing only on the two named defendants.

Apple has not made any public statement through its official newsroom about the legal action. OpenAI's public response has been limited to calling the suit without merit.

The preservation letters are a standard step in a lawsuit, but their breadth matters. Once someone receives a document preservation letter, they are legally required to keep all relevant materials — emails, messages, internal memos, and design files. Throwing anything away can lead to court penalties. By sending these letters to 40 people at once, Apple is broadening the amount of potential evidence before any court agreement narrows what actually has to be shared.

The injunction request targeting OpenAI's AI hardware device development is the most consequential part of the complaint. If granted, even temporarily, it could force OpenAI to pause work that touches any code, design, or supplier connection traceable to Apple. Proving that Apple's information actually made it into OpenAI's hardware work is harder than just claiming it did, but the injunction itself pressures OpenAI to show it has kept Apple's information out — or face disruption to its operations.

The allegation that OpenAI coached employees to bypass Apple's departure security checks, if proven, would set this case apart from ordinary job-change disputes. Lawsuits over individual employees taking secrets are common in the tech industry. Claims that a competitor systematically told new hires how to defeat the previous employer's security systems are far less common and, if proven, would expose OpenAI as a company to heavier legal consequences, not just the individuals involved.

The wider context is a tension that has been building for some time. AI companies have been aggressively hiring hardware talent away from established electronics companies, and those companies have been treating their proprietary designs and supplier networks as intellectual property worth defending. The 400-plus Apple employees who moved to OpenAI stand out in volume, not in direction. What is unresolved is whether courts will treat the movement of people and the movement of proprietary information as separate things — or whether the sheer number of employees moving from one company to the other will itself be treated as evidence.

Apple filed on July 10. OpenAI called the suit meritless. The preservation letters went out to 40 people on or before July 17. The federal court in California will now decide whether the dispute escalates from accusation to court order.