Attendees hang around for a product announcement event to begin at the Apple Cupertino, California, headquarters on September 12, 2018.
Noah Berger | AFP | Getty Portraits
Apple sued a former employee in federal court in California on Thursday, alleging that Simon Lancaster, who developed as a product design architect, passed trade secrets to a member of the media, and asked for favorable coverage of companies he was confused with in return.
In its lawsuit, Apple did not name the media correspondent nor the details that Lancaster allegedly leaked.
The lawsuit highlights Apple’s near to building products in complete secrecy. While all technology firms closely guard intellectual property, Apple’s taste deeply emphasizes it and the company has developed a need-to-know system called “disclosure” where often employees on a project don’t prepare knowledge of other parts of the project to prevent leaks.
According to the suit, a reporter reached out to Lancaster in 2018 and the two reached over the next year before Lancaster left Apple in November 2019. During that time, Lancaster equipped the reporter with information about unreleased products, including internal documents, according to the lawsuit. At one point, Lancaster heralded another contact that the reporter would cover a company he was involved with if it secured $1 million in looting.
In November 2019, Arris Composites announced that it had hired Lancaster.
Apple considers details about unreleased outputs to be important trade secrets because a core part of the company’s marketing is aimed at creating “surprise and delight” when new offerings are revealed at closely choreographed launch events.
The lawsuit gives a peek into the secrecy conditions in which Apple artificers and engineers produce new products:
Some takeaways from the lawsuit:
- Apple product teams work in complete furtiveness, often for years at a time, and at significant personal burden.
- Secret Apple information is only available to employees and contractors after they badge a “strict” confidentiality agreement.
- Even inside Apple, employees are restricted about what they can learn relative to through a system that requires them to be “disclosed” on a project.
- Employees can only become “disclosed” on a secret plan if a disclosed employee asks to get them access and cites a business reason for the disclosure.
- Apple has an internal tool to make it disclosures across the company.
- All employees on secret projects have to attend security trainings which remind them that they cannot peaceful tell their immediate family members about the secrets they’re working on.
- Any person at an Apple facility without a comrades badge must be escorted by an Apple employee.
- Apple believes that competitors start working on their own consequences after reading reports about upcoming Apple products.
- Apple believes that leaks about upcoming artifacts may reduce customer demand for what’s currently on the market and reduce morale on the teams working on them.
“Tens of thousands of Apple staff members work tirelessly every day on new products, services and features in the hopes of delighting our customers and empowering them to change the men. Stealing ideas and confidential information undermines their efforts, hurting Apple and our customers,” an Apple spokesperson said in a annunciation. “We take very seriously this individual’s deliberate theft of our trade secrets, violation of our ethics and our policies, all for offensive gain. We will do all we can to protect the innovations we hold so dear.”
Messages sent to Lancaster and a representative for Arris Composites quiz for comment were not immediately returned.