Apple accused a former Imaginative and prescient Professional engineer of stealing confidential paperwork associated to the headset. In a lawsuit filed on June 24, Apple alleges Di Liu, a senior design engineer on the firm, stole a “large quantity” of commerce secrets and techniques.
Liu joined Snap quickly after leaving Apple in an analogous position.
Former Apple design engineer stole confidential Imaginative and prescient Professional information
Di Liu labored at Apple for seven years, rising to turn out to be a senior product design engineer. He was a part of the R&D staff at Apple that developed the Imaginative and prescient Professional mixed-reality headset. In that position, Liu gained entry to “varied novel Apple applied sciences which are embodied in Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional or not but launched,” in response to the lawsuit.
Liu resigned from Apple, citing well being causes and a want to spend extra time with household. However as Apple’s lawsuit reveals, that was not the case. Liu acquired a job supply from Snap simply two weeks earlier than he submitted his resignation. He quickly joined the corporate in a product design position “considerably much like the position he held at Apple,” reviews Silicon Valley.
Regardless of the brand new position at Snap, Liu served his normal two-week discover interval at Apple. Had he disclosed that he was becoming a member of Snap, Apple would have instantly revoked his entry to all proprietary data.
The lawsuit says that, three days earlier than leaving, Liu downloaded 1000’s of paperwork from Apple’s servers to his cloud server. The info allegedly included commerce secrets and techniques, data associated to product designs, provide chain technique and extra.
“The overlap between Apple’s proprietary data that Mr. Liu retained and Snap’s AR merchandise (for which Mr. Liu is a ‘product design engineer’) means that Mr. Liu intends to make use of Apple’s proprietary data at Snap,” Apple says in its lawsuit.
Apple uncovered information theft by means of Liu’s laptop computer logs
Liu used the Apple-issued laptop computer to obtain the information to his cloud server, in response to the lawsuit. Appls says it found Liu’s shady exercise whereas reviewing the system’s logs. Liu later deleted the information from the laptop computer, serving to Apple establish the stolen information.
Apple’s lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from Liu and calls for the return of all stolen information. The corporate additionally requests entry to his units to confirm that no confidential data stays.
