Daijiworld Media Network - San Jose

San Jose, Aug 23: Apple Inc has filed a lawsuit accusing smartphone maker Oppo of poaching a senior member of its Apple Watch team and encouraging him to steal trade secrets to benefit Oppo’s wearable device development.

The complaint, filed Thursday in federal court in San Jose, California, names sensor system architect Chen Shi, who allegedly accessed confidential documents on Apple’s health-sensing technologies before leaving the company in June. Apple claims Shi secretly downloaded 63 documents from a protected folder and transferred them to a USB drive just before his departure, while concealing his impending employment with Oppo.

According to the lawsuit, Shi misled colleagues by saying he was returning to China to care for his aging parents and attended numerous one-on-one meetings with Apple Watch team members to gather sensitive information. Apple alleges Oppo was aware of and encouraged Shi’s activities.

In messages cited in the complaint, Shi reportedly informed Oppo executives that he had been “reviewing various internal materials and doing a lot of 1:1 meetings in an effort to collect as much information as possible,” with an Oppo vice president responding affirmatively.

Apple warned that allowing such actions to go unpunished would undermine its innovation efforts and provide competitors with an unfair advantage. Shi subsequently joined Oppo’s research center in Silicon Valley, which operates under Oppo and InnoPeak brands.

Oppo has denied wrongdoing, stating it found “no evidence establishing any connection between these allegations and the employee's conduct during his employment at Oppo” and pledged to cooperate with the legal process.

The case is Apple Inc. v. Chen Shi, Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp Ltd., and InnoPeak Technology Inc., 5:25-cv-7105, US District Court, Northern District of California.