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Apple is suing a design engineer who allegedly copied Apple Vision Pro research and is using it in his new role at Snap, maker of Snapchat and smart glasses.

There's probably now a standard pro forma lawsuit that Apple gets out every year, as this latest example of alleged trade secret theft is far from the first. In 2022, an employee leaked confidential information to the press, while in 2023, three ex-Apple engineers were accused of stealing Apple Car.

And in 2024, Apple finally settled with Rivos, a startup firm accused of taking both trade secrets and poaching engineers from Apple.

According to SiliconValley.com, 2025's concerns the ex-Apple engineer Di Liu. He is accused of stealing what Apple's suit says is a "massive volume [of] various novel Apple technologies that are embodied in Apple Vision Pro or not yet released."

Neither Liu nor any legal representative of him has commented, so the only details are as laid out by Apple in its lawsuit. Those details allege that Liu specifically told Apple that he was resigning to spend more time with his family instead of going to another firm.

If he'd disclosed that Snap had offered him a new job, he would have been immediately cut off from access to Apple's network. As it was, he continued working there for a two-week notice period, and it was at least during this time that he allegedly copied files from his Apple-issued laptop and into his personal cloud storage.

While Liu deleted files that would reveal precisely what details he is said to have taken, Apple argues that "the overlap between Apple's proprietary information that Mr Liu retained and Snap's AR products... suggests that Mr Liu intends to use" what he is believed to have taken.

Apple wants the court to force Liu to return these allegedly stolen trade secrets, although it's not clear how that would work — or how it would help. Apple does also want unspecified damages.

Note that Snap is not accused of any wrongdoing. A Snap spokesperson said that the company had examined the suit's claims and has "no reason to believe they are related to this individual's employment or conduct at Snap."

Separately, Snap launched smart Spectacles in 2017 — six years before Apple Vision Pro was announced — though they sold poorly. A second version, aimed at developers, was launched in May 2021.