Apple’s lawsuit shows the company’s extreme focus on secrecy

Apple sued a former California federal court judge on Thursday, claiming that Simon Lancaster, who worked as a product design architect, shared trade secrets with a member of the media and instead asked for favorable coverage of companies with who was involved.

In its lawsuit, Apple did not name the media correspondent or the details that Lancaster allegedly revealed.

The process highlights Apple’s approach to building products in secret. While all tech companies closely protect intellectual property, Apple’s culture is deeply accentuated, and the company has developed a knowledge-based system called “disclosure” in which project employees often have no knowledge of other parts of the project to prevent leakage. . .

According to the lawsuit, a reporter contacted Lancaster in 2018 and the two communicated the following year before Lancaster left Apple in November 2019. Meanwhile, Lancaster provided the reporter with information about unpublished products, including internal documents, according to the lawsuit. At one point, Lancaster told another contact that the reporter would cover a company he was involved with if he obtained $ 1 million in funding.

In November 2019, Arris Composites announced that it had hired Lancaster.

Apple considers the details of the unreleased products to be important trade secrets, as an essential part of the company’s marketing aims to create “surprises and delights” when new products are unveiled at closely choreographed launch events.

The process takes a look at the secrecy conditions under which Apple designers and engineers produce new products:

Some dishes from the process:

• Apple product teams work in secret, often for years and at a significant personal burden.
• Apple’s secret information is only available to employees and contractors after they sign a “strict” confidentiality agreement.
• Even within Apple, employees are restricted in what they can learn through a system that requires them to be “disclosed” in a project.
• Employees can become “disclosed” in a secret project only if a disclosed employee requests their access and mentions a business reason for disclosure.
• Apple has an internal tool to handle disclosures throughout the company.
• All employees who participate in secret projects must attend security courses that remind them that they cannot even tell close family members about the secrets they are working on.
• Anyone in an Apple unit without a company badge must be escorted by an Apple employee.
• Apple believes that competitors are starting to work on their own products after reading reports about future Apple products.
• Apple believes that leaks about future products can reduce customer demand for what is currently on the market and can reduce the morale of the teams working on them.

“Tens of thousands of Apple employees work tirelessly every day on new products, services and features in the hopes of delighting our customers and empowering them to change the world. Stealing ideas and confidential information undermines their efforts, hurting Apple and our customers. “An Apple spokesman said in a statement. “We take this individual’s deliberate theft of our trade secrets, breaches of our ethics and policies very seriously, all for personal gain. We will do everything we can to protect the innovations we hold so much.”

Messages sent to Lancaster and a representative for Arris Composites requesting comments were not returned immediately.