Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI reassigned to new judge

Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI has been reassigned to U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, replacing the magistrate judge initially assigned to the case. Here are the details.

New judge assigned, October hearing vacated

When a civil lawsuit is filed in the Northern District of California, it is randomly assigned to either a district judge or a magistrate judge. If the case is assigned to a magistrate judge, each party must then indicate whether it agrees to let that judge oversee the entire case.

That is because district judges have the authority to oversee federal civil cases from start to finish, while magistrate judges can do so only with the consent of every party involved.

On the day Apple filed its trade secrets lawsuit against two former employees, OpenAI, and Jony Ive’s io Products, the case was randomly assigned to Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi.

This meant that all parties involved in the lawsuit would need to submit forms indicating whether they consented to DeMarchi overseeing the case in full.

Apple, for its part, appears to have declined. Yesterday, the company submitted a consent-or-declination form, which has yet to be made public, that appears to have triggered the process of reassigning the case to a district judge.

There do not appear to be any other filings that would explain the reassignment, which strongly suggests that Apple checked the box declining magistrate judge jurisdiction.

As a result, the case has now been reassigned to U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, with Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins assigned to handle discovery matters.

With the reassignment, the initial case management conference previously scheduled before Judge DeMarchi for October 13 has been vacated and will need to be rescheduled before Judge Davila.

However, two other sets of deadlines remain in place: the parties must discuss settlement options and plans for exchanging evidence by September 22, then make their initial disclosures and file a joint case management statement by October 6.