Apple has filed a lawsuit against a former employee, accusing him of stealing trade secrets related to the development of the Apple Watch and sharing them with Chinese smartphone maker Oppo, which was aware of these actions.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Jose, California. According to the documents, Shi Chen – a former sensor systems architect on the Apple Watch team – received highly confidential information from the company before joining Oppo’s Silicon Valley-based research and development unit, InnoPeak Technology.

Apple alleges that Chen, who worked at the company from 2020 to June 2025, downloaded 63 documents from a protected folder on a USB drive the day before he left. He also held dozens of one-on-one meetings with Apple Watch engineers to gather sensitive information about ongoing research and development projects, knowing full well that the data was confidential.

The lawsuit alleges that Chen informed Oppo’s vice president of health technology, Zeng Jijin, of his secret activities. Zeng responded in a chat with a brief “alright” followed by an “okay” emoji, which Apple interpreted as evidence that the company was complicit in the crime.

Apple also accuses Chen of misleading colleagues about his future plans, telling them he was returning to China to care for elderly parents and had no plans to start a new job.

Oppo, headquartered in Dongguan in southern China’s Guangdong province, denied Apple’s allegations and said it had “no evidence of misappropriation of trade secrets.” The company said it would actively cooperate with the lawsuit and was confident that “fair legal proceedings will clarify the facts.”

According to his public LinkedIn profile, Chen graduated from the University of Washington and earned a doctorate in electrical engineering from Columbia University before joining Apple.

Oppo is one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in China, shipping 10.7 million devices in the second quarter of 2025 and achieving a 15.5% market share, lagging behind Huawei and Vivo. In the global market, Oppo is losing ground to Chinese competitors Xiaomi, Vivo and Transsion.

The company entered the smartwatch segment relatively late, releasing its first model in 2020 – five years after the debut of the Apple Watch. The smart wearables market in China has reached 43.17 million shipments in 2024, an increase of nearly 19% compared to 2023. The top five manufacturers in the country are Huawei, Xiaomi, BBK Electronics, Apple and Honor. | BGNES