Apple claims a former engineer secretly funnelled confidential Apple Watch research to Oppo before joining the Chinese smartphone maker.
Oppo is a consumer electronics and smartphone company based in Dongguan, Guangdong, China, and is part of BBK Electronics, which also owns Vivo, OnePlus, and Realme. It was founded in 2004 and has since grown into one of the world’s largest smartphone makers, with a strong presence across Asia and expanding globally.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in San Jose, Apple said Chen Shi, a sensor system architect, downloaded 63 protected files onto a USB stick just days before his June departure. The company alleges Shi had already promised Oppo access to internal data on health-sensing features, reports Bloomberg.
According to the complaint, Shi misled colleagues by saying he was returning to China to care for aging parents. Instead, he joined Oppo’s Silicon Valley lab, which operates under the Oppo and InnoPeak brands. Apple alleges Oppo “knew of and encouraged his activities.”
In one cited exchange, Shi messaged Oppo’s vice president of health in Chinese, saying 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 — will share with you all later.” The executive replied “alright” and followed up with an “OK” emoji.
Apple also says Shi scheduled “dozens of one-on-one meetings with Apple Watch technical team members” to probe active projects before leaving.
The company argues the actions jeopardize its investment in smartwatch innovation: “Allowing the actions of Shi and Oppo to go unpunished would undermine Apple’s commitment to innovation and its substantial investments in pioneering technologies like Apple Watch.”
The filing was submitted by Apple in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.
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