Apple claims one of its San Jose engineers stole trade secrets, then took them to rivals reports SiliconValley.com.
Di Liu, a seven-year employee, told Apple he was resigning his position as a design engineer to spend more time with his family and look after his health, but he had secretly taken a job with a rival, and before leaving the tech giant, he stole a “massive volume” of its trade secrets, Apple alleges in a lawsuit.
Over his seven years at Cupertino-headquartered Apple, Liu rose to become a senior product-design engineer, and worked on the research and development of the Apple Vision Pro. He now works as a product-design engineer at Santa Monica-based Snap, which owns social messaging app Snapchat, and sells a wearable product called “Spectacles.”
His final role at Apple gave him “access to various novel Apple technologies that are embodied in Apple Vision Pro or not yet released,” Apple says. In the company’s lawsuit, when Liu resigned, he concealed from Apple a job offer two weeks earlier from Snap that meant “he would soon start working in a product design role at Snap substantially similar to the role he held at Apple.”
According to SiliconValley.com, Apple accused Liu of breaking his confidentiality agreement, and is seeking unspecified damages. The company also wants a court order forcing Liu to return allegedly stolen trade secrets, and subjecting his electronic devices and cloud accounts to inspection, to ensure they contain none of Apple’s proprietary information.
