Apple has filed a lawsuit against a former senior engineer, accusing him of stealing confidential company data related to its Vision Pro headset before moving to Snap Inc (the maker of Snapchat) . The lawsuit, filed in California on 24 June, 2025, alleges that Di Liu, who worked at Apple for nearly seven years, secretly downloaded thousands of sensitive documents during his notice period in 2024.
He held an important role as a system product design engineer on Apple’s Vision Pro project—a mixed-reality headset that marked the company’s entry into spatial computing. According to the complaint, Liu transferred proprietary files to his personal cloud account while he was still in possession of his official laptop given by Apple and used his active employee credentials.
Liu reportedly did not share with Apple the fact that he was joining Snap, an Apple rival in the augmented reality (AR) space offering products such as Spectacles. By not disclosing this information, he was able to retain full system access during the standard two-week offboarding period. During this time, Apple alleges that Liu accessed secure internal systems and extracted documents containing sensitive hardware designs, code names, technology blueprints and supply-chain data.
As per the company, these documents are directly related to technologies that overlap with Liu’s new responsibilities at Snap. Though Snap is not mentioned as a defendant, the lawsuit highlights the potential misuse of Apple’s intellectual property in a competitor’s AR product line.
This isn’t the first time that Apple is taking legal action to protect its trade secrets. In the past, this tech giant has previously pursued other former employees for leaking confidential information. Apple is committed to securing its innovations, particularly in emerging product categories such as spatial computing and augmented reality.
