Apple sues ex-employee for passing trade secrets to the media

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Apple has sued a former employee for leaking information about unreleased Apple products and features to a media contact. In return, the ex-employee would receive positive attention for his start-up, the claim goes.

Apple has filed suit against its former Advanced Materials Lead and Product Design Architect in San Jose Court. The company claims that the man worked closely with a media source in late 2018, stealing and publishing trade secrets in a coordinated manner. It would include details about unreleased hardware, future announcements and upcoming features of Apple products.

The collaboration with the reporter, according to the claims, continued and even strengthened after the man left Apple, in November 2019. On his last day, he is said to have put a large amount of classified documents from Apple’s corporate network on his personal computer. This information would also have helped him work for his start-up. Apple claims that taking away the trade secrets has undermined the morale of the teams working on the products and has favored competitors.

According to Apple Insider, it is Arris, a materials research company that is also an Apple supplier. Apple claims the ex-employee told a third party that the journalist had agreed to publish an article about his start-up in exchange for information about Apple. That article should be about a “design veteran who spent 12 years at Apple and leaves for an amazing startup.” The information he offered in return was about a product that Apple calls “Project X” in the lawsuit. It is not known which medium it is that would have collaborated with the employee, but Apple Insider thinks that Project X concerns Apple’s augmented reality glasses or the AirPods Max.

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