Ex-Apple employee allegedly stole secrets about the Vision Pro

A former Apple design engineer is alleged to have stolen a considerable amount of trade secrets relating to the Vision Pro. Apple is currently taking legal action against the former employee in a senior position, reports the local news site Siliconvalley.com. According to the report, the man is said to have quickly uploaded files to his private cloud storage a few days before switching to a competitor in the Valley.

The man is said to have worked at Apple for seven years and, according to the indictment, was most recently involved in the development of the Vision Pro as a senior product design engineer. According to the statements made by Apple's lawyers, he resigned and claimed to want to spend more time with his family. However, he had concealed from his employer that he had already accepted a job at Snap. As Snap' s Spectacles are a product that is technically in a similar genre to the Vision Pro, this would have been reportable from Apple's point of view. However, Snap is not a defendant and, according to the report's findings, did not play a role in the theft.

Thousands of documents copied

Three days before his departure, the design engineer downloaded thousands of Apple documents containing trade secrets and transferred them to his personal cloud storage. These documents contained information on product development, quality control, costs and supply chain strategies. He then deleted files from his company notebook to cover his tracks, Apple accuses the former employee. The company is demanding the return of the stolen data, access to the accused's electronic devices and damages of an unknown amount.

For Apple, this is not the first time that the iPhone manufacturer has had to deal with former employees who allegedly or actually wanted to capitalize on the secrets of their previous employer. In 2024, a former engineer was sentenced to four months in prison for trying to smuggle trade secrets out of the company before moving to a Chinese start-up. A year earlier, a former software developer was charged – but was able to flee to China. An arrest warrant cannot be executed as China does not have a corresponding extradition treaty with the USA.

Although Apple's internal security precautions are strict and have led to convictions in these and other cases, the theft of company secrets continues to occur. The leaking of secrets to leakers and reporters also remains a constant source of annoyance for Apple.

(mki)