Attendees expect a product announcement event to begin at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, on September 12, 2018.
Noah Berger | AFP | Getty Images
Apple on Thursday sued a former employee in California federal court, alleging that Simon Lancaster, who worked as a product design architect, leaked trade secrets to a member of the media and asked for coverage in return. favorable of the companies with which he was involved.
In its lawsuit, Apple did not name the media correspondent or the details that Lancaster allegedly leaked.
The lawsuit highlights Apple’s approach to building top-secret products. Although all technology companies closely monitor intellectual property, Apple’s culture deeply accentuates it, and the company has developed a system of need for knowledge called “disclosure” where employees of a project often do not they are aware of other parts of the project to prevent leaks. .
According to the lawsuit, a journalist contacted Lancaster in 2018 and the two communicated for the following year before Lancaster left Apple in November 2019. During that time, Lancaster provided the journalist with information about unpublished products, including internal documents. , according to the lawsuit. At one point, Lancaster told another contact that the journalist would cover a company he was involved with if he got $ 1 million in funding.
In November 2019, Arris Composites announced that it had hired Lancaster.
Apple considers details about unreleased products to be important trade secrets, as a core part of the company’s marketing aims to create “surprise and delight” when new products are unveiled at highly choreographed launch events.
The lawsuit takes a look at the secret conditions under which Apple’s designers and engineers produce new products:
Some takeaway dishes on demand:
- Apple’s product teams work in complete secrecy, often for years at a time and with a significant personal burden.
- Apple’s secret information is only available to employees and contractors after they sign a “strict” confidentiality agreement.
- Even within Apple, employees have restrictions on what they can learn through a system that requires them to be “disclosed” in a project.
- Employees can only be “disclosed” in a secret project if a disclosed employee asks them for access and cites a business reason for the disclosure.
- Apple has an internal tool for managing company-wide disclosures.
- All employees on secret projects should attend security trainings that remind them that they cannot even communicate to their immediate relatives the secrets they are working on.
- Anyone who has Apple facilities without a company badge must be escorted by an Apple employee.
- Apple believes competitors are starting to work on their own products after reading reports on Apple’s upcoming products.
- Apple believes leaks about upcoming products can reduce customer demand for what is currently on the market and reduce the morale of the teams working on it.
“Tens of thousands of Apple employees work tirelessly every day on new products, services and features in the hopes of delighting our customers and giving them the chance to change the world. Stealing ideas and confidential information undermines their efforts , harming Apple and our customers, “Apple’s spokesman said in a statement. “We take very seriously the deliberate theft of our trade secrets by this individual, the violation of our ethics and our policies, all for personal gain. We will do our best to protect the innovations we love so much.”
Messages sent to Lancaster and a representative of Arris Composites asking for feedback were not returned immediately.