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Apple is suing a former member of the Apple Watch team for allegedly sharing trade secrets with Chinese consumer tech rival Oppo.
According to the suit, first spotted by MacRumors, Dr. Chen Shi, a former sensor systems architect on the Apple Watch team, “conspired to steal Apple’s trade secrets relating to Apple Watch and disclose them to his new employers, Oppo and InnoPeak.”
Dr. Shi is accused of downloading 63 confidential documents from Apple’s systems onto one of his personal USB drives. The engineer, who spent five years at the company, is also accused of lying about the nature of his departure, saying he was set to return to China to provide care to elderly parents, instead of taking up his new position at OPPO.
In addition, Shi allegedly set up and attended “dozens of one-on-one meetings with Apple Watch technical team members,” where he learned about their ongoing research and development efforts, including work on optical sensors, temperature sensors, and ECG sensors.
Apple’s lawyers also allege that Shi was fully aware of the illegal nature of his alleged activities, reportedly searching “how to wipe out [a] MacBook.” In the middle of downloading information from Apple’s shared drives, Dr. Shi reportedly searched, “Can somebody see if I’ve opened a file on a shared drive?”
Oppo denies Apple’s claims. “We are aware of the recent lawsuit filed by Apple in California and have carefully reviewed the allegations in Apple’s complaint,” Oppo said in a statement shared with MacRumors. “We have found no evidence establishing any connection between these allegations and the employee’s conduct during his employment at Oppo.”
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The US technology sector has been on guard about these types of insider information leaks for the best part of a decade. In 2020, John Demers, who served as US Assistant Attorney General for National Security, told the RSA Conference that “We see [trade secret theft] more and more manifesting itself from the insider threat.”
Apple’s insider information theft allegations have resulted in federal charges in the past. In March 2023, a federal grand jury indicted and later charged a former Apple employee in connection with the now-defunct Apple Car project, alleging he stole trade secrets relating to autonomous systems.
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About Will McCurdy
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