Apple files case against former Chinese employee, stole secrets related to Apple Watch before joining Oppo

Apple has issued a legal notice to its previous employee. Apple accused the employee of pilfering confidential information regarding Apple Watch and leaking it to Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo. Apple filed this case against Chen Xi in Northern California. The employee was with Apple's sensor system architect division.

Here, he had numerous confidential information about Apple Watch. These consist of design, technical documents, internal specifications and Apple's future product roadmap information. Apple accused Chen Xi of misusing his privileges after he left the company.

Apple says that Chen Xi left the job to return to China to take care of his elderly parents in China. He did not inform about the Oppo job. Apple claims that Chen met the technical team of Apple Watch dozens of times and obtained information about the ongoing research on it. Chen is currently leading Oppo's sensing technology team.

Apple has also accused him of having downloaded 63 files from Apple's Secure Box folder three days before he resigned and subsequently saved them in a USB drive. Even after this, he allegedly also searched how to remove the activity history of MacBook.

Apple also says that Chen also messaged Oppo employees that he had gathered as much information as possible. Most of this information is about heart rate sensing technology.

Apple has filed a case in the court demanding to stop Chen and Oppo from using or sharing the company's trade secrets. Along with this, Apple has also demanded compensation, damages, punitive damages as well as lawyer's fees.

Responding to Apple's allegations, Oppo says that they respect the trade secrets of all companies. The company also said that they are not using any secrets of Apple. The Chinese company also said that they investigated Apple's allegations and did not find anything that confirms Apple's allegations.