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A former Apple employee allegedly stole trade secrets from the company with the intention of bringing them to a new employer, the Mercury News reports today. The materials involved in particular autonomous vehicle technology – a company on which Apple would have worked for years under the seal of secrecy.
Xiaolang Zhang was arrested by federal agents at the San Jose International Airport after buying a last-minute ticket for China aboard Hainan Airlines. According to a tweet of Oakland-based journalist Henry K. Lee, Zhang took secret documents from Apple while he was on paternity leave, telling authorities that he had placed data on his wife's laptop. He was charged today with stealing trade secrets from the US District Court of Northern California.
Both sources claim that Zhang was going to work for XMotors, a company that claims to build smart, fully electric cars for the younger generation. Also known as Xiaopeng Motors, XMotors is listed as having offices in Beijing and Guangzhou, China, as well as in Mountain View, California, but has a relatively spartan website. His Twitter account states that he counts Alibaba, Foxconn and IDG Capital as investors, and has developed an electric car called XPeng G3.
According to the Mercury News, Zhang received "wide access to confidential internal databases" as part of his work on a team developing autonomous cars. After informing Apple that he would leave the company and go to work for XMotors, Apple's investigators searched his two phones and his laptop. They discovered that he had aggressively downloaded confidential files, in addition to visiting Apple's labs and removing items during paternity leave. Zhang allegedly took the secret objects and documents, and tried to leave the country when he was arrested by the FBI.
A LinkedIn profile apparently owned by Zhang suggests that he had been working with Apple since December 2015, and that he had previously spent more than four years at Marvell Semiconductor. His specialties included chip architecture and system solutions, including high-speed interfaces and card designs. The specific documents and items that he took to Apple are unknown and are likely to remain under seal during the criminal proceedings.
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