Apple is suing Chinese consumer electronics company Oppo for poaching a member of the Cupertino giant’s Apple Watch team to allegedly steal trade secrets.
Apple, represented by lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis, is bringing the lawsuit against the company’s former sensor system architect Dr. Cheng Shi, and his new employers China-based Oppo and California-based Innopeak.
Dr. Shi now leads a team developing sensing technology at Oppo’s U.S. office, according to a complaint filed by Apple on Thursday in the Northern District of California.
What is Shi accused of doing?
Dr. Shi was a highly paid engineer at Apple between January 2020 and June 2025 where Apple says he had “a front row seat to Apple’s development of its cutting-edge health sensor technology, including highly confidential roadmaps, design and development documents, and specifications for ECG sensor technology,” which helps Apple Watches measure heart activity, according to the complaint.
Apple accuses Dr. Shi of downloading 63 confidential documents on the company’s shared drive for employees to a USB drive just three days before leaving. The documents allegedly included sensitive information on the technological capabilities of yet to be released products and “technical specifications concerning hardware and software implementations” of Apple’s sensor products like temperature sensors in its Apple Watch offerings.
Before downloading the documents from Apple’s shared drive onto his Macbook, Dr. Shi’s internet search history allegedly revealed that he looked up “how to wipe out macbook” and “Can somebody see if I’ve opened a file on a shared drive?”
Apple also claims that Dr. Shi stole confidential technical information from the team that is developing Apple’s custom chips. Apple develops its own custom silicon chips for its Mac, iPhone, and iPad products. The company has also been working on designing custom AI chips for some time now, and the effort is considered key to CEO Tim Cook’s AI overhaul.
Oppo is known for its high-tech smartphones, and the China-based company got some heat online back in 2020 for releasing what many deemed an Apple Watch clone.
Oppo’s smartphones, although ano match yet to Apple’s iPhones, do remarkably well in Asian markets, particularly in China, one of Apple’s largest markets.
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