Apple accused a former Vision Pro engineer of stealing confidential documents related to the headset. In a lawsuit filed on June 24, Apple alleges Di Liu, a senior design engineer at the company, stole a “massive volume” of trade secrets.
Liu joined Snap soon after leaving Apple in a similar role.
Former Apple design engineer stole confidential Vision Pro data
Di Liu worked at Apple for seven years, rising to become a senior product design engineer. He was part of the R&D team at Apple that developed the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. In that role, Liu gained access to “various novel Apple technologies that are embodied in Apple Vision Pro or not yet released,” according to the lawsuit.
Liu resigned from Apple, citing health reasons and a desire to spend more time with family. But as Apple’s lawsuit reveals, that was not the case. Liu received a job offer from Snap just two weeks before he submitted his resignation. He soon joined the company in a product design role “substantially similar to the role he held at Apple,” reports Silicon Valley.
Despite the new role at Snap, Liu served his usual two-week notice period at Apple. Had he disclosed that he was joining Snap, Apple would have immediately revoked his access to all proprietary information.
The lawsuit says that, three days before leaving, Liu downloaded thousands of documents from Apple’s servers to his cloud server. The data allegedly included trade secrets, information related to product designs, supply chain strategy and more.
“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,” Apple says in its lawsuit.
Apple uncovered data theft through Liu’s laptop logs
Liu used the Apple-issued laptop to download the files to his cloud server, according to the lawsuit. Appls says it discovered Liu’s shady activity while reviewing the device’s logs. Liu later deleted the files from the laptop, helping Apple identify the stolen data.
Apple’s lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from Liu and demands the return of all stolen data. The company also requests access to his devices to verify that no confidential information remains.