Apple claims former employee stole secrets and gave them to reporter
Apple is suing a former employee, claiming he stole sensitive company secrets and gave them to an unnamed journalist.
The Cupertino iPhone giant alleged in the lawsuit filed last week that Simon Lancaster of San Jose exploited seniority gained over 10 years with the firm to get access to internal meetings and documents outside his job responsibilities.
“The trade secrets Lancaster stole and sent to the Correspondent for publication included details of unreleased Apple hardware products, unannounced feature changes to existing hardware products, and future product announcements, all of which Apple guards closely,” the suit filed March 11 in San Jose U.S. District Court claimed. “The Correspondent then published the stolen trade secrets in articles, citing a ‘source’ at Apple.”
Lancaster, who worked at Apple as a product designer until late 2019, several times proposed that the reporter give him personal benefits in a “quid pro quo” exchange for the secrets, including requesting positive coverage of a startup Lancaster had invested in, the suit alleged.
“Lancaster even recruited the Correspondent to serve as his personal investigator. In one instance, Lancaster requested that the Correspondent explore a rumor that could prove harmful to a company in which Lancaster had invested,” the suit claimed.
Lancaster could not immediately be reached for comment, and the lawsuit did not identify the journalist or any outlet where articles were allegedly published.
Apple alleged that Lancaster’s role as the unidentified journalist’s source started in October 2018 when he was contacted by the reporter, and “deepened” after Lancaster said he was leaving the company.
Apple claimed its investigation of Apple-owned devices provided to Lancaster for work showed that after he announced his resignation he communicated with the journalist about specific secrets the reporter wanted. “On multiple occasions, Lancaster then sent the Correspondent certain of the requested confidential materials using Apple-owned devices. On other occasions, Lancaster met with the Correspondent in person,” the suit alleged.
Apple claimed that members of its product teams, who “work in complete secrecy, often for many years, and at significant personal burden” had their morale undermined by the “deceitful and indefensible release of these product details.”
After resigning, Lancaster started working at a company that was an Apple vendor, and some of the secrets he “misappropriated” relate to his role at the new job, the suit alleged.
“On his last day at Apple, Lancaster downloaded a substantial number of confidential Apple documents from Apple’s corporate network onto his personal computer that would benefit his new company,” the suit said.
The company also alleged that Lancaster’s actions gave advantage to its competitors.
The technology titan’s suit suggests it gathered a considerable amount of information about email, text and telephone communications between Lancaster and the correspondent via its probes of devices it says it had provided to Lancaster. “In Spring 2019, Lancaster expressed to the Correspondent in profane terms his displeasure with Apple,” the suit alleged. “His displeasure, on information and belief, was based on a story published that day that reported a rumor that Apple would produce a new hardware product. Shortly thereafter, Lancaster asked the Correspondent to investigate the substance of that story because ‘it could mean trouble for my startup.’
Less than two weeks later, the suit said, Lancaster told a third party that the correspondent had committed to an article about the startup if it obtained $1 million in funding. “The Correspondent agreed to publish that article in exchange for Lancaster’s ongoing misappropriation of Apple trade secrets,” the suit alleged.
The suit quoted purported communications between Lancaster and the journalist directly, claiming that in a “text conversation” Lancaster asked the reporter “to write a story about a 12-year Apple Design Veteran leaving for an amazing startup.” In October 2019, the journalist asked Lancaster, “Can you grab me those docs before you leave?” Lancaster replied, “Which ones,” and the journalist then “identified specific Apple confidential documents that they wanted Lancaster to misappropriate,” the suit claimed.
Apple is seeking restitution, unspecified damages including punitive damages, and a court order barring Lancaster from using any proprietary Apple information.