Apple has filed a lawsuit accusing a former senior design engineer, Di Liu, of stealing trade secrets related to its Vision Pro headset before joining Snap.

In the June 24 filing, Apple alleges Liu downloaded thousands of confidential documents in his final days at the company and stored them in personal cloud accounts.

The lawsuit marks the latest instance of Apple pursuing legal action against a former employee for leaking confidential information.

Known for its strict internal secrecy, Apple often goes to great lengths to protect its intellectual property—even taking former staff to court.

According to the complaint, Di Liu failed to disclose during his resignation that he was leaving for Snap, a competitor in the smart glasses space.

As a result, Apple granted him the standard two-week transition period without restricting access to internal systems—time he allegedly used to download sensitive company files.

“Worse still, the review of Mr. Liu’s Apple-issued work laptop also shows that while maintaining access to Apple’s Proprietary Information under false pretenses, he used his Apple credentials to exfiltrate thousands of documents containing Proprietary Information from Apple’s secure file storage systems,” the iPhone maker’s lawyers said in the filing.

According to the lawsuit, many of the files Di Liu allegedly downloaded contained internal codenames for Apple projects and detailed proprietary information about the company’s technology, product design, and supply chain.

Apple claims Liu violated confidentiality agreements he signed upon joining the company.

He worked at Apple from 2017 to 2024, serving as a system product design engineer on the Vision Pro headset.