Participants await the start of the product announcement event at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, on September 12, 2018.
Noah Berger | AFP | Getty Images
Apple sued a former employee in a California federal court on Thursday, alleging that Simon Lancaster, who worked as a product design architect, passed on trade secrets to a member of the media and asked in return for favorable corporate coverage with the companies. which was involved.
In its lawsuit, Apple did not reveal the name of the media correspondent or the details that Lancaster allegedly leaked.
The lawsuit highlights Apple’s approach to building products in complete secrecy. While all technology companies keep intellectual property close, Apple’s culture places a strong emphasis on it, and the company has developed a need-to-know system called “disclosure”, where employees on a project are often unaware of other parts of the project. design to prevent leaks.
According to the lawsuit, a reporter contacted Lancaster in 2018 and the two communicated the following year before Lancaster left Apple in November 2019. During that time, Lancaster provided the reporter with information about unreleased products, including documents according to the lawsuit. At one point, Lancaster told another contact that the reporter would cover a company he was involved with if it secured $ 1 million in financing.
In November 2019, Arris Composites announced that it had hired Lancaster.
Apple considers details about unreleased products to be important trade secrets because a central part of the company’s marketing aims to create “surprise and delight” when new products are unveiled at carefully choreographed launch events.
The process takes a look at the confidentiality conditions under which Apple designers and engineers produce new products:
Some conclusions of the process:
- Apple’s product teams work in complete secrecy, often for years in a row, and with a significant personal burden.
- Apple’s secret information is only available to employees and contractors after signing a “strict” confidentiality agreement.
- Even within Apple, employees have restrictions on what they can learn through a system that requires them to be “publicized” in a project.
- Employees can only be “disclosed” on a secret project if a disclosed employee requests access to them and cites a commercial reason for disclosure.
- Apple has an internal tool to manage disclosures across the company.
- All employees on secret projects must attend security training that reminds them that they cannot even tell their closest relatives about the secrets they are working on.
- Anyone at Apple facilities without a company badge must be accompanied by an Apple employee.
- Apple believes that competitors start working on their own products after reading reports on Apple’s upcoming products.
- Apple believes that leaks on upcoming products can reduce customer demand for what is currently on the market and reduce the morale of the teams working on them.
“Tens of thousands of Apple employees work tirelessly every day on new products, services and resources in the hope of delighting our customers and enabling them to change the world. Stealing confidential ideas and information undermines their efforts, harming Apple and our customers “, an Apple spokesman said in a statement. “We take this individual’s deliberate theft of our trade secrets very seriously, the violation of our ethics and policies, all for personal gain. We will do everything we can to protect the innovations we so cherish.”
Messages sent to Lancaster and an Arris Composites representative asking for comment were not immediately returned.