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Apple claims an ex-employee stole Apple Watch trade secrets for Oppo

Apple filed a lawsuit against Oppo and someone who previously worked on the Apple Watch team.

According to the lawsuit, Shi worked as a Sensor System Architect for the Apple Watch from January 2020 to June 2025, but was seeking employment with Oppo as early as April 2025. In the lawsuit, Shi allegedly 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?” Along with these claims, Apple said in the lawsuit 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. Earlier this summer, the company sued a design engineer, alleging that he stole trade secrets about the Vision Pro and shared them with his new employer, Snap.

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