Apple is taking a former employee to court, claiming he stole secret designs for the Apple Watch. The tech giant accuses Dr. Chen Shi of conspiring to pass trade secrets to competitor Oppo. This kind of legal battle is a familiar tune in the fast-moving tech world.
According to Apple’s lawsuit, Dr. Chen Shi began gathering information even before he left the company. He reportedly attended dozens of meetings with the Apple Watch development team. During this time, he learned about how they worked. Apple also claims he downloaded 63 encrypted documents from their secure Box system onto a USB drive.
Apple alleges that Dr. Chen sent messages to Oppo. In these messages, he supposedly said he was collecting as much information as possible before his start date with the new company. The lawsuit also points to his search history on his company MacBook. He searched for things like “how to delete data on MacBook” and “will others know if I open files on shared drive.”
Dr. Chen’s role at Apple was a sensor system architect. Apple states he was at the forefront of developing their health sensor technology. This highly sensitive work included confidential plans, designs, development documents, and specifications for the Apple Watch’s ECG sensor.
The lawsuit claims that Oppo had messages showing the Chinese company supported, approved, and agreed to Dr. Chen’s plan. They allegedly worked with him to collect Apple’s trade secrets. Dr. Chen is now leading Oppo’s sensor technology development team. Apple found this out from messages Dr. Chen left on his company-issued iPhone.
For its part, Oppo denied these accusations. The company stated it “did not misappropriate Apple’s trade secrets.”