Di Liu of San Jose told Apple he was resigning his position as a design engineer to spend more time with his family and look after his health, but he had secretly taken a job with a rival, and before leaving the iPhone giant, he stole a “massive volume” of its trade secrets, Apple alleges in a lawsuit against Liu.
Over his seven years at Cupertino-headquartered Apple, Liu rose to become a senior product-design engineer, and worked on the research and development of the company’s “Vision Pro” augmented-reality headset, a wearable computing device. The lawsuit, and Liu’s LinkedIn profile, indicate he now works as a product-design engineer at Santa Monica-based Snap, which owns social messaging app Snapchat, and sells a wearable product called “Spectacles.”
His final role at Apple gave him “access to various novel Apple technologies that are embodied in Apple Vision Pro or not yet released,” the lawsuit filed June 24 in Santa Clara County Superior Court alleged.
When Liu resigned, he concealed from Apple a job offer two weeks earlier from Snap that meant “he would soon start working in a product design role at Snap substantially similar to the role he held at Apple,” the lawsuit claimed.
“Because Mr. Liu did not inform Apple that he was departing to work on another company’s product, Mr. Liu was permitted to stay on at Apple for the standard two-week departure period rather than immediately losing access to Apple’s proprietary information,” the lawsuit alleged.
Three days before leaving Apple, Liu used his company credentials to download thousands of Apple documents containing trade secrets, and upload them into his personal cloud storage, the lawsuit claimed.
Included in the material was information related to product design and development, and production information concerning quality control, cost, and supply chain strategies, the lawsuit alleged.
“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,” the lawsuit claimed.
Liu could not be reached for comment. It was not clear from court records whether he had a lawyer representing him in the case. Snap, not named as a defendant or accused of any wrongdoing, said it had reviewed the claims in Apple’s lawsuit, and had “no reason to believe they are related to this individual’s employment or conduct at Snap.”
Apple accused Liu of breaking his confidentiality agreement, and is seeking unspecified damages. The company also wants a court order forcing Liu to return allegedly stolen trade secrets, and subjecting his electronic devices and cloud accounts to inspection, to ensure they contain none of Apple’s proprietary information.
Apple’s alleged insights into Liu’s treatment of confidential information appear to have arisen from examination of his company-issued computer, which the lawsuit claimed he used to download secrets, and copy them to his cloud storage. Liu has retained Apple’s confidential information, the lawsuit claimed.
“Mr. Liu’s actions were deliberate,” the lawsuit alleged. “Logs on his Apple-issued work laptop show that Mr. Liu individually selected the folders he copied and, in some cases, renamed and reorganized them after moving them to his personal cloud storage account.”
The lawsuit claimed Liu also deleted files from his company laptop “that might have let Apple determine what data Mr. Liu stole.”
Allegations of theft of Apple’s trade secrets in recent years have led to criminal and civil court cases. In 2021, Apple sued product designer Simon Lancaster in San Jose U.S. District Court, alleging he provided stolen proprietary information to a journalist. Lancaster in 2022 agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to settle the case, court records show.
Also in 2022, Apple sued Mountain View computer hardware startup Rivos in San Jose U.S. District Court, claiming it poached employees who took chip-design secrets before leaving Apple. Rivos in a 2023 court filing denied the claim, saying Apple was “hoping to frighten and send a message to any employees who might dare to leave Apple to work somewhere else.”
In 2023, federal authorities charged software engineer Weibao Wang with stealing thousands of sensitive documents from Apple. The U.S. Department of Justice claimed Wang fled to China five minutes before midnight the day law enforcement agents visited his Mountain View home. He was believed to be employed in China for an Apple competitor. An arrest warrant was issued for Wang, but the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with China.
Last year, former Apple engineer Zhang Xiaolang received a four-month prison sentence for stealing Apple secrets while he was preparing to work for a Chinese startup.
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