A former Apple employee accused of stealing Apple trade secrets has pleaded guilty in federal court in California.
Xiaolang Zhang was arrested in 2018 for stealing information about a proposed autonomous car. According to CNBC, he could now face a fine of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in prison.
Zhang, a hardware engineer working on the technology, allegedly stole information on prototypes, reference manuals, and a 25-page document detailing blueprints for self-driving cars.
Zhang, who was on a plane to China when he was arrested, will be sentenced in November.
FBI documents suggest that he tried to send the documents to the Chinese auto company XMotors. Zhang told Apple that he was interested in working for a rival company.
Another former employee, Jizhong Chen, was also charged with stealing company trade secrets. Since 2018, CNBC previously reported that Apple found thousands of files containing Apple proprietary and confidential materials.
Chen is said to have applied for a job at a rival Chinese company.
In a statement at the time, Apple said: We are cooperating with authorities on this matter and refer all inquiries to the FBI.
Thousands of employees are believed to work in Apple’s secret management division, but the company is clearly wary of such projects.
Rumors have swirled about the potential of Apple-branded self-driving cars for years, but little concrete information about the plans has been released.
In 2015, the company reportedly began surveying a test site near San Francisco, California.
Two years later, an academic paper on self-driving cars, written by two Apple computer scientists, was published on the ArXiv preprint service.
Most recently, automaker Hyundai issued a hastily revised press release saying the two companies were in talks on auto technology.
In a January 2021 statement, the company said it was “discussing Apple and Hyundai, but as this is in the early stages, nothing has been decided.”
But just a month later, auto industry media said the two companies were no longer in talks.
Source: Metro
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