#legal

A federal judge has granted most of Apple's request for early discovery in its trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, the AI hardware startup io Products and two former Apple employees, according to a report from 9to5Mac on the October 13 ruling.

Apple filed the suit around July 10, 2026. It names former employees Chang Liu and Tang Tan, along with OpenAI and io Products. Apple alleges that the two ex-employees improperly accessed or used confidential information about Apple's products and technologies to help OpenAI's consumer hardware effort, and that information was also obtained from Apple employees during recruiting interviews.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up Apple's appeal in the long-running App Store dispute with Epic Games. At issue is a civil contempt finding against Apple for violating a 2021 injunction.

That injunction came out of Epic's 2020 lawsuit. Apple won most of the original case, but the court ordered it to let developers put links in their apps pointing customers to outside payment options. Apple complied with the links, then attached a 27 percent commission to purchases made through them within seven days, against its usual 30 percent rate. Epic argued that this undercut the order.