Apple alleges a former Vision Pro engineer stole trade secrets: report

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) filed a lawsuit against a former design engineer named Di Liu alleging that Liu stole a “massive volume” of trade secrets before leaving the company, Silicon Valley reported.

The lawsuit alleges that Liu claimed he was resigning from his job to spend more time with his family and look after his health, but he had secretly taken a job with Snap (NYSE:SNAP), the report added.

Apple and Snap did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.

Liu was a senior product-design engineer and worked on the research and development of Apple’s augmented-reality headset Vision Pro. The lawsuit, and Liu’s LinkedIn profile, suggests that he now works as a product-design engineer at Snapchat-owner Snap. Snap sells a wearable product called Spectacles, the report noted.

The lawsuit, which was filed on June 24 in the Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleges that Liu’s final role at Apple gave him “access to various novel Apple technologies that are embodied in Apple Vision Pro or not yet released.”

“Because Mr. Liu did not inform Apple that he was departing to work on another company’s product, Mr. Liu was permitted to stay on at Apple for the standard two-week departure period rather than immediately losing access to Apple’s proprietary information,” the suit alleged.

In addition, the lawsuit alleged that three days before leaving Apple, Liu used his company credentials to download thousands of Apple documents containing trade secrets, and uploaded them into his personal cloud storage.

The lawsuit alleged that “the overlap between Apple’s proprietary information that Mr. Liu retained and Snap’s AR products (for which Mr. Liu is a ‘product design engineer’) suggests that Mr. Liu intends to use Apple’s proprietary information at Snap.”

Information related to product design and development, and production information related to quality control, cost, and supply chain strategies, was included in the materials, according to the lawsuit.

Snap, which is not named as a defendant or accused of any wrongdoing, said it had reviewed the claims in Apple’s lawsuit, and had “no reason to believe they are related to this individual’s employment or conduct at Snap,” according to the report.

The iPhone maker has accused Liu of breaking his confidentiality agreement, and is seeking unspecified damages. Apple also wants a court order directing Liu to return allegedly stolen trade secrets, and subjecting his electronic devices and cloud accounts to inspection, to make sure they do not contain Apple’s proprietary information, the report noted.

In recent years, allegations related to stealing Apple’s trade secrets have led to criminal and civil court cases. In 2021, Apple filed a lawsuit against product designer Simon Lancaster alleging that he provided stolen proprietary information to a journalist. In 2022, Lancaster agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to settle the case, the report added.

In 2022, Apple sued Rivos alleging that the computer hardware startup poached staff, who took chip-design secrets before leaving Apple. In a 2023 court filing Rivo denied the claim.

In 2023, federal authorities charged software engineer Weibao Wang of stealing thousands of sensitive documents from Apple.

Last year, a former Apple engineer named Zhang Xiaolang received a four-month prison sentence for stealing Apple secrets while he was preparing to work for a Chinese startup, the report added.