Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge (possibly paywalled; Apple News+ link):

Apple is suing a former employee for allegedly stealing confidential Vision Pro headset research before leaving to join Snap’s product design team.[…]

According to the lawsuit, Liu falsely claimed he was quitting his job for health reasons and did not disclose that he had a new job lined up as a product design engineer for Snap. This prevented Apple from immediately revoking Liu’s access to internal systems, a standard protocol activated by the company upon notice that employees are joining a competitor. Apple alleges that this allowed Liu to copy a “massive volume” of proprietary information that he could later access after being locked out of Apple’s network.

Why do people think they can get away with such skullduggery?

Apple says it’s unable to determine exactly what was downloaded by Liu, but argues the overlap between the information Liu took with Snap’s AR Spectacles products “suggests that Mr. Liu intends to use Apple’s Proprietary Information at Snap.” According to the complaint, Apple is pursuing unspecified financial damages from Liu for breaching contractual obligations and requesting that Liu be forced to return the stolen documents.

Apple is asking for, among other things:

• An award of damages in an amount to be determined at trial;
• Prejudgment and post-judgment interest at the maximum rate allowed by law; and
• Apple’s actual costs, expenses, attorneys’ fees incurred in this suit.

Whew. This will have a deleterious effect on Mr. Liu’s finances and future employment opportunities, I’m sure.

I doubt stealing files for a Snapchat position will have been worth it.

I suspect a surprisingly well-written apology will be forthcoming.

My favorite part from the complaint:

Mr. Liu gave his resignation from Apple at the end of October 2024. At the time, he told his colleagues he wanted to spend more time with his family and take care of his health. As a result, Apple allowed him to keep working—and maintain access to Apple’s Proprietary Information—for two more weeks.

A review of Mr. Liu’s Apple-issued work laptop showed that he was not honest about his stated reason for leaving Apple. Weeks before his departure, he negotiated a position with Snap Inc. (“Snap”), a maker of augmented reality (AR) glasses. He received an offer of employment on October 18, which means he waited nearly two weeks until October 30 to notify Apple that he was resigning from his position with Apple. And even then, he did not disclose he was leaving for Snap. Apple would not have allowed Mr. Liu continued access had he told the truth.

It’s well-known inside Apple: if you’re leaving for a competitor, you’re shut out from your accounts and walked out the door. He had time to download those files before resigning—without lying to his coworkers. What happened to honor among engineers?

Then there’s this:

On his final days as an Apple employee, he used his Apple-issued work laptop to copy more than a dozen folders containing thousands of files from a folder used for Apple work to his personal cloud storage account in a folder named “Personal” and a sub-folder within named “Knowledge.”

I’ll give Mr. Liu the benefit of the doubt here and suggest he downloaded these files as a personal reminder of the great work he did. But c’mon, everyone knows you name your surreptitious smugglings “Porn.”