Apple is suing a former employee for allegedly leaking trade secrets to the journalist
Apple (Simon Lancaster) is suing Simon Lancaster, the company's former product design engineer, accusing him of leaking and selling trade secrets and details about products that have not been released to an unnamed journalist.
And Lancaster apparently did just that, hoping to gain publicity for his next project after leaving Apple.
Tens of thousands of our employees work tirelessly every day on new products, services and features in the hope that our customers are happy, and theft of ideas and confidential information undermines their efforts, and harms the company and our customers.
She added: We take very seriously the deliberate theft of our trade secrets from this individual, the violation of our ethics and policies, all for personal gain, and we do everything in our power to protect the innovations that are dear to us.
According to Apple's lawsuit, Lancaster and the journalist began communicating in 2018 about obtaining information, and then the two spent the next year communicating.
Lancaster reportedly contacted the journalist in the spring of 2019 and asked him to investigate rumors of a potential Apple product that could be causing trouble for his startup.
The lawsuit also alleges that Lancaster boasted to an outside party shortly after that conversation that the journalist would write a story about his startup if its funding reached $ 1 million.
Lancaster told the journalist in October 2019 that he was planning to leave Apple, provided classified information about Apple products, and asked if he wanted to write a story about a veteran Apple designer who had spent 12 years at the company and was leaving for a startup.
It is also alleged that the journalist asked Lancaster for additional information about an undeclared project that Apple refers to as Project X.
Lancaster then submitted his notification of resignation to Apple on October 15, but kept chatting with the journalist, who the next day requested specific documents that he wanted Lancaster to have before leaving the company.
Apple also claims that Lancaster attended a meeting about Project X even after he submitted his resignation notice in order to get more information to leak to the journalist, even though he had been instructed by other employees not to attend.
And Apple says: that Lancaster used his account within Apple to download confidential information until the end of his work at midnight on the first of November 2019.
According to Apple, Lancaster logged in from an external site in order to obtain materials the company says helps the new employer.
Lancaster began working for Apple in 2008 and spent 11 years at the company before leaving in 2019 to join Arris Composites, a materials design company, as head of consumer products.