Apple has sued a former employee, accusing him of stealing trade secrets related to the Apple Watch and sharing them with his new employer, Chinese smartphone maker Oppo. The company also alleges that Oppo was aware of the misconduct.
The complaint was filed Thursday in federal court in San Jose, California. It claimed that Shi Chen, a former sensor system architect for the Apple Watch team, obtained confidential information from the iPhone maker before joining Oppo’s Silicon Valley-based U.S. research arm, InnoPeak Technology.
Apple alleged that Shi downloaded 63 files from one of Apple’s protected folders and transferred the material to a USB drive before searching the internet for “how to wipe out [a] macbook” and “can somebody see if I’ve opened a file on a shared drive?” The lawsuit also noted that Shi sent a message to his future Oppo employers that he would “collect as much information as possible” about Apple’s health-sensing technologies.
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Apple said that Shi held a number of one-on-one meetings with Apple Watch engineers to gather sensitive details about ongoing research and development projects, while being fully aware about the importance of keeping these details confidential. The company also accused Shi of misleading his colleagues about his whereabouts, saying he told them he was returning to China to care for elderly parents and had no plans to seek new employment.
Oppo denied all allegations against it, and stated that it will “actively cooperate with the legal process” and expressed confidence that “fair judicial proceedings will clarify the facts.”
“We have found no evidence establishing any connection between these allegations and the employee’s conduct during his employment at Oppo,” the company said in a statement.
Apple found out through messages on Shi’s former work iPhone that Shi now leads a sensing technology team at Oppo.
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Oppo is one of China’s largest smartphone manufacturers, having shipped 10.7 million devices in the country to secure a 15.5 per cent market share in the second quarter, trailing Huawei Technologies and Vivo, according to research firm IDC. It entered the smartphone sector relatively late, releasing its first model in 2020, five years after the Apple Watch debuted.
China’s smart wearable shipments reached 43.17 million units in 2024, a nearly 19% increase from 2023, according to IDC. The market’s top five vendors were Huawei, Xiaomi, BBK Electronics, Apple and Honor.
Apple’s accusation against Oppo is particularly noteworthy considering the ongoing rivalry between the U.S. and China in the tech sector. This rivalry is particularly intense when it comes to artificial intelligence. Recently, trackers have been found in shipments of Nvidia and AMD chips contained in servers manufactured by Dell and Super Micro, according to Reuters. These trackers have been reportedly placed by U.S. authorities in order to check if the chips are being diverted to China.