News from the IT community on October 6th: A few days ago, OpenAI accused Apple of submitting new evidence in violation of regulations during a trade secret lawsuit. Now, Apple has counterattacked, accusing OpenAI of exceeding the limits permitted by court rules in its response.

According to IT, this lawsuit was initiated by Apple, targeting two former employees, Liu Chang (Chang Liu) and Tan Tang (Tang Tan), as well as OpenAI and io Products. They are accused of misappropriating trade secrets. One of the core demands in the case is to obtain a temporary injunction.

In simple terms, Apple requested the court to issue a temporary injunction. Apple's argument is that during the trial of the case, it is necessary to prevent its trade secrets from further being integrated into the hardware development work of OpenAI.

In the multiple rounds of legal disputes surrounding this ban application, Apple submitted a legal defense opinion, accompanied by five expert written testimonies as support. This move immediately drew accusations from several defendants, who argued that Apple was in violation of regulations by introducing new evidence and requested that the court not accept some of the materials.

OpenAI along with the other defendants, while submitting objection documents and accusing Apple of presenting new evidence, also submitted several documents to refute Apple's various claims.

Today, Apple submitted a response document to this objection raised by the defendant. Apple argued that the defendant did not merely object to the new evidence; instead, they added several additional claims and testimonies of their own.

Rule 7-3(d)(1) of the court allows a party to an action to object to new evidence presented in a reply brief, but it also stipulates that such an objection document 'shall not give rise to further debate on that motion.' Apple claims that the defendant did not comply with this restriction and instead used this objection document to re-engage in debate over the merits of Apple's own application for a temporary injunction.

Apple cited as an example that the defendant questioned Dr. Leng ( Runge ) 'whether he had the basis to conduct the analysis, whether he fully responded to the 'contradictory evidence', and whether he proved that some of Apple's information had not yet been made public... Such arguments do not constitute objections based on new evidence... ('Debates that are based on the plaintiff's lack of evidence to support certain positions or contradictions with other testimonies' do not constitute objections regarding evidence.)'

Apple also strongly opposes a new written testimony submitted by Liu Chang, stating that this material represents "the most serious overstepping of boundaries" among the documents submitted by the defendant:

The most serious issue of overstepping boundaries comes from the brand-new written testimony submitted by Mr. Liu Chang, which contains eight paragraphs of new evidence. The defense team is using this new testimony to attempt to explain why Mr. Liu Chang 'erased' all the data on the device before returning the iMac computer to Apple; to debate the meaning of some text messages between him and a supplier of Apple; and to try to justify his use of a confidential Apple computer document in the past. ... Such testimony violates the regulations that prohibit further debate on this matter. The entire set of objection documents, together with this written testimony, amounts to 9 pages in length, which also violates the limit that objection documents shall not exceed 5 pages in length. ...

It is worth mentioning that when the defense submitted Liu Chang's written testimony, they stated that they only hoped the court would review this testimony on the premise that the court decided to accept the part of the evidence from Apple that was questioned by the defense.

Nevertheless, Apple argues that since the defendant has now submitted new arguments and evidence on their own, the court should review all the case files and not exclude any of the evidence contained in Apple's defense arguments:

Apple stated that the additional arguments and evidence submitted by the defendant are more akin to a 're-defense opinion' rather than an objection to evidence. However, the defendant did not request permission from the court in advance to submit such a re-defense opinion. Nevertheless, considering that the defendant has already provided a comprehensive response to all the so-called 'new evidence' mentioned in Apple's defense opinion in the documents submitted this time, the court should dismiss the defendant's application to exclude Apple's defense evidence and make a ruling on the temporary injunction based on the complete case file. The case file should include the arguments and evidence from Apple's defense opinion, as well as the additional arguments and evidence submitted in violation of regulations this time by the defendant.

The court is scheduled to hold an oral debate on Apple's application for a temporary injunction on October 14th.