Slashdot Mirror
Ex-Apple Worker Charged With Stealing Self-Driving Car Trade Secrets (reuters.com)
U.S. authorities on Monday charged a former Apple employee with theft of trade secrets, alleging that the person downloaded a secret blueprint related to a self-driving car to a personal laptop and later trying to flee the country, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court. From a report: The complaint said that the former employee, Xiaolang Zhang, disclosed intentions to work for a Chinese self-driving car startup and booked a last-minute flight to China after downloading the plan for a circuit board for the self-driving car. Authorities arrested Zhang on July 7 at the San Jose airport after he passed through a security checkpoint. "Apple takes confidentiality and the protection of our intellectual property very seriously," Apple said in a statement. "We're working with authorities on this matter and will do everything possible to make sure this individual and any other individuals involved are held accountable for their actions."
He was just trying to pull a Levandowski. All he has to do now is found a new self-driving car company. in China.
Or maybe this act was done on Levandowski's behalf....
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
"Plan for a circuit board" doesn't necessarily mean "PCB design"; it could include pretty much anything from a schematic diagram to a bill of materials to FPGA design files.
Either way, there's little point in bothering to go after this guy. As soon as Apple starts having one of their Chinese manufacturing plants fab the boards, they'll make a few extras at the end of the run and ship them to whatever Chinese self-driving car wants to steal the IP. Besides, the value is in the software anyway, not the hardware. I can't imagine Apple having any interesting hardware IP in that space. Other than miniaturization of stuff like LIDAR, and maybe specialized DSP hardware for evaluating tensor models (in which all the interesting IP is chip design, not PCB design), most of the hardware tends to be off-the-shelf.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Wondering what the legal justification is of arresting someone at an airport based on statements from an employer. Doesn't seem to meet the grounds for felony IP infringement as that requires distribution (which wasn't mentioned or proved-- besides if he distributed it electronically he wouldn't need the laptop).
He copied something illegally. Courts seemingly are required to prove it's a felony.
Must be nice to be so rich and powerful in a city you can just call the cops to do what you want.