Apple is suing one in all its former design engineers for allegedly stealing a trove of commerce secrets and techniques that he then offered to his new employer, Snap. As reported by , Di Liu left his position as senior product-design engineer after a seven-year stint with Apple, citing private and household causes in his resignation to the corporate.
Earlier than leaving Apple, Liu had labored on the Imaginative and prescient Professional headset, the place based on the lawsuit seen by SiliconValley.com he was given “entry to varied Apple applied sciences which are embodied in Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional or not but launched.” The lawsuit additionally claims that Liu didn’t open up to Apple that two weeks previous to resigning he’d been provided a job by Snap — the place the designer has been working since January 2025 based on his Linkedin profile — that was “considerably comparable” to his position on the firm he departed. In addition to proudly owning Snapchat, Snap additionally makes AR glasses known as Spectacles, that are at the moment of their fifth era.
In response to the report, Liu’s resolution to not inform Apple that he’d quickly be engaged on an analogous product to the Imaginative and prescient Professional at one other firm meant he was allowed to work his commonplace two-week departure interval. The lawsuit alleges that three days earlier than leaving the corporate, Liu used his firm credentials to obtain “hundreds” of Apple’s company paperwork, which he uploaded into private cloud storage. It claims he seemingly supposed to intentionally use Apple’s proprietary info at Snap, given the plain similarities between the merchandise, and added that he deleted recordsdata from his firm laptop computer that would have implicated him.
Apple is reportedly in search of unspecified damages, in addition to the return of the allegedly stolen commerce secrets and techniques, and for its former worker’s gadgets and cloud accounts to be handed over for inspection. SiliconValley.com unsuccessfully approached Liu for remark, however Snap mentioned it has learn the claims in Apple’s lawsuit and had “no motive to consider they’re associated to this particular person’s employment or conduct at Snap.”
This isn’t the primary time Apple has sued an ex-employee. In 2019, the corporate Gerard Williams III, who labored on cell chips for 10 years earlier than becoming a member of NuVia Inc, of breaching his contract. Williams disputed the lawsuit and claimed Apple had been spying on his textual content messages. In 2022, Apple the then startup Rivos of poaching workers from its chip design division, with two former workers allegedly taking with them gigabytes of confidential information.
Earlier this 12 months, an ex-Apple engineer an apology after confessing to leaking details about upcoming merchandise to journalists throughout his eight years on the firm. A lawsuit alleging that Andrew Aude leaked details about the then unreleased Imaginative and prescient Professional to reporters at The Wall Avenue Journal and The Data was dismissed.
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