Apple accuses former Vision Pro engineer of stealing trade secrets

Apple is suing a erstwhile worker for allegedly stealing confidential Vision Pro headset probe earlier leaving to articulation Snap’s merchandise plan team. In the complaint filed successful Santa Clara County Superior Court connected June 24th, Apple accuses Di Liu of downloading thousands of documents containing proprietary accusation from Apple’s interior systems and redeeming them to his idiosyncratic unreality retention relationship successful his last days arsenic a elder plan technologist for the Vision Pro.

According to the lawsuit, Liu falsely claimed helium was quitting his occupation for wellness reasons and did not disclose that helium had a caller occupation lined up arsenic a merchandise plan technologist for Snap. This prevented Apple from instantly revoking Liu’s entree to interior systems, a modular protocol activated by the institution upon announcement that employees are joining a competitor. Apple alleges that this allowed Liu to transcript a “massive volume” of proprietary accusation that helium could aboriginal entree aft being locked retired of Apple’s network.

“Mr. Liu’s actions were deliberate; logs connected his Apple-issued enactment laptop amusement that Mr. Liu individually selected the folders helium copied and, successful immoderate cases, renamed and reorganized them aft moving them to his idiosyncratic unreality retention account,” Apple said successful the complaint. “Further, Mr. Liu took actions to conceal question of the files, intentionally deleting files from his Apple-issued enactment laptop.”

Apple says it’s incapable to find precisely what was downloaded by Liu, but argues the overlap betwixt the accusation Liu took with Snap’s AR Spectacles products “suggests that Mr. Liu intends to usage Apple’s Proprietary Information astatine Snap.” According to the complaint, Apple is pursuing unspecified fiscal damages from Liu for breaching contractual obligations and requesting that Liu beryllium forced to instrumentality the stolen documents.

Apple has not named Snap arsenic a suspect successful the suit. Snap said successful a connection to SiliconValley that it had reviewed Apple’s claims, and had “no crushed to judge they are related to this individual’s employment oregon behaviour astatine Snap.”

This is the latest of respective lawsuits that Apple has launched against erstwhile employees for misappropriating proprietary accusation astir its products. The institution dropped a suit against a erstwhile iOS technologist successful February and settled its lawsuit against a erstwhile plan designer successful 2022 aft accusing them of leaking confidential commercialized secrets to journalists.