Apple has escalated its trade-secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, according to Bloomberg, alleging in a new court filing that OpenAI is actively destroying important evidence. Bloomberg reports that Apple made the claim in a brief filed Monday in support of its motion for expedited pretrial fact-finding. That means the immediate fight is not only over the merits of Apple’s trade-secret allegations, but also over how quickly Apple can obtain facts before trial. The filing also targets a former Apple employee. According to Bloomberg, Apple alleged that Chang Liu, described as a former iPhone engineer, “not only downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic but also used it in his work” at OpenAI. The provided material does not establish that allegation as fact; it establishes that Apple made the claim in court. The broader lawsuit accuses OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, of stealing trade secrets, Bloomberg reports. OpenAI has pushed to have the case dismissed. The cluster does not include OpenAI’s detailed response to Apple’s evidence-destruction allegation. For now, the story is a legal escalation with two distinct layers: Apple’s underlying trade-secrets claim, and its new assertion that evidence is being destroyed while the case is pending. The next substantive signal will be how the court treats Apple’s request for expedited fact-finding and OpenAI’s push for dismissal. Who benefits: Apple benefits procedurally if the court accepts its argument for expedited pretrial fact-finding. That would move the case faster toward evidence gathering on the issues Apple says are urgent. Who's exposed: OpenAI is exposed to reputational and legal risk from Apple’s allegations, though the claims are not established in the provided material. Chang Liu is also specifically named in Apple’s alleged schematic-use claim, according to Bloomberg.