IP Law Daily, TRADE SECRETS—N.D. Cal.: X not entitled to ‘fishing expedition’ against OpenAI in California court, (Nov 13, 2025)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

The Musk-led company sought discovery in California to support ongoing litigation against one of its former employees in the U.K.

Social media and chatbot giant X would not be entitled to entitled to obtain discovery from one of its leading competitors in California in order to support a lawsuit pending in the United Kingdom against a former software engineer accused of pilfering company secrets, the federal court for San Francisco has held. The court, in denying X’s application for discovery to support the foreign proceeding, found that the discovery requests were premature, overly broad, and essentially a “fishing expedition” aimed at gaining an unfair advantage in both the U.K. action as well as X’s own lawsuit against the same competitor in California (X.AI LLC v. OpenAI, Inc. No. 3:25-mc-80299-JCS (N.D. Cal. Nov. 11, 2025)).

The discovery order comes in the context of a broad-based legal dispute between OpenAI, the owner and operator of the chatbot ChatGPT, and X, the Elon Musk-owned company that operates (through its subsidiary xAI) the chatbot Grok. The legal dispute arises largely out of claims that OpenAI induced two former X software engineers—Jimmy Fraiture and Xuechen Li—to steal X’s trade secrets. X has filed three recent lawsuits in connection those claims. One complaint, filed in October in the U.K. High Court, takes aim at Fraiture. Another complaint, filed in the federal court for the Northern District of California, takes aim at Li. And a third complaint, also filed in the California court, takes aim directly at OpenAI.

These three actions have now led to a fourth action—this one connected to the UK lawsuit but filed in California. More specifically, X has now applied under 28 U.S.C. § 1782 for an order seeking discovery from OpenAI for use in the U.K. proceeding against Fraiture. The California court, after declining to relate the application to the pending lawsuit against OpenAI in the same court, then issued this order.

Application for discovery. The court denied X’s application to take discovery from OpenAI. Under Section 1782, a district court in the district in which a person resides or is found may order that person to “give his testimony or statement or to produce a document or other thing for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal.” When evaluation a request under the statute, the court noted, a district court typically considers four factors: (1) whether the “person from whom discovery is sought is a participant in the foreign proceeding,” (2) “the nature of the foreign tribunal, the character of the proceedings underway abroad, and the receptivity of the foreign government or the court or agency abroad to U.S. federal court judicial assistance,” (3) whether the request “conceals an attempt to circumvent foreign proof-gathering restrictions or other policies of a foreign country or the United States,” and (4) whether the request is “unduly intrusive or burdensome.” Under these factors, the court found, the application failed.

First, the court found, OpenAI’s precise relationship with the U.K. proceeding was still unclear, thus making the application premature. “Although the case law at times refers to whether the ‘person’ is within the foreign tribunal’s jurisdictional reach,” the court noted, “the key issue is whether the material is obtainable through the foreign proceeding.” Here, the court noted, the U.K. proceeding was initiated only 16 days before X filed its discovery application in California, and it was therefore too soon to tell whether the discovery X sought would be “unobtainable absent § 1782(a) aid.” Indeed, the court noted, it was “too soon for xAI to know what information it will be able to obtain from Fraiture directly, which also makes it impossible to narrowly tailor its subpoena to seek discovery only of the information xAI will be unable to obtain in the U.K. Proceeding.” This factor therefore weighed against the application.

Moreover, the court noted, it appeared that X was “seeking to ‘side-step’ discovery rules” with its application. X would have the opportunity, the court noted, to seek this discovery both in the U.K. court also in connection with X’s other action against OpenAI in the California court. Under U.K. rules, most importantly, requests for relevant documents from third parties “must be supported by evidence” and the disclosure “must be not merely relevant but ‘necessary in order to dispose fairly of the claim or to save costs”—a stricter requirement than in the United States. “Given the broad nature of the discovery requested in the [s]ubpoena and the narrow allegations against Fraiture in the U.K. Proceeding,” the court noted, it appeared that X was “using Section 1782 to obtain discovery as to which it might have difficulty meeting the burdens imposed under U.K. discovery rules.” That factor, too, weighed against the application.

Finally, the court noted, the California subpoena was unduly intrusive and burdensome. The discovery requests in the subpoena were “extremely broad” and, more importantly, “appear[ed] to be a ‘fishing expedition’ aimed at gaining an unfair advantage in both the U.K. Proceeding and the [other California case] (and possibly in other pending or future litigation xAI is contemplating bringing against OpenAI and/or former xAI employees).” Moreover, the court noted, the broad discovery requests were also likely to duplicate discovery in the other California case. “Such duplication of discovery imposes an undue burden on OpenAI and the Court,” the court noted. The application would be denied.

The Case is No. 3:25-mc-80299-JCS.

Judge: Spero, J.

Attorneys: Carson Swope (Winston & Strawn LLP) for X.AI LLC. Carolyn Hoecker Luedtke (Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP) for OpenAI, Inc.

Companies: X.AI LLC; OpenAI, Inc.

Cases: AINews TechnologyInternet TradeSecrets CaliforniaNews GCNNews