Apple has Submitted a lawsuit Against a former senior product design engineer who claims that he had stolen business secrets in connection with the 3500 dollar vision per headset of the company.
The case was submitted on June 24, 2025 in front of the Santa Clara County’s Supreme Court. It accuses the Liu – a Chinese national life in San Jose, who was employed by Apple from September 2017 to November 2024 and had a leading role in the Vision Products Group.
According to Apple, Liu colleagues announced that he had resigned from the company for personal and health reasons, but a review by Mr. Lius Apple-based work laptop showed that he was not honest with his explained reason for leaving Apple. “The lawsuit claims that Liu has negotiated a position with SNAP Inc. that calls its own extended glasses called Spectacles and” received an employment offer on October 18, which means that he was waiting for almost two weeks until October 30th to notify Apple that he had resigned from his position with Apple.
“Apple would not have allowed Mr. Liu if he had said the truth,” said the suit.
During this two-week time, Liu allegedly used his laptop and its registration information on which Apple and its registration in order to access and copy confidential documents in his personal cloud memory, including design schemes, F & e recordings, supply data data and files with internal code names, many as “Apple Confidential”. In addition, Liu is said to have deliberately renamed, re -organized and then deleted files from his company laptop to cover his tracks according to the lawsuit.
Apple claims that Lius actions are intentionally and calculated to benefit his new role in SNAP, where he now works as a product design for AR hardware, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Apple applies for damages and a court order in which Liu has to return all proprietary materials. It also demands that all of its devices and cloud accounts are inspected by forensic examiners.
Snap is not referred to as the accused in the lawsuit, and Apple does not accuse Snapchat’s parent company of Snapchat, but the complaint says that Lius may have given actions an unfair leg on the spatial-computing market. Send last month announced There will be new light glasses with more immense experiences from next year.
Apple and Snap did not react immediately Assets‘s request for comment.
Apple has a long history in which he aggressively defended his intellectual property – and against former employees who are accused of leaving or stolen trade secrets.
Apple’s Vision Pro, which debut in February 2024 with a price of $ 3,500, reported reported Between 1.3 and 1.6 billion US dollars sales For the company last year – unbearable for a new product category, but modestly according to Apple’s high standards.
However, Apple plows ahead: long-time analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, which has deep connections in the Apple supply chain, has Recently published a report The implementation of an ambitious roadmap for the Vision Pro and shows that Apple currently has at least seven projects in development.
According to the report, Apple plans a large thrust in 2027 with the publication of the vision Air-one significantly lighter, more affordable headset-so, a few ray-ban-like intelligent glasses that focus on audio, photography and AI-driven environmental awareness.
