finishing | Produced by Zheng Liyuan
| CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)
On Monday, former Apple hardware engineer Xiaolang Zhang pleaded guilty in the San Jose federal court in the United States: He admitted that he had stolen before switching to Xiaopeng trade secrets of apple car division. Not surprisingly, today’s news has caused huge discussions at home and abroad:
Judging from the latest court documents, although Zhang Xiaolang has pleaded guilty, the court has not disclosed the specific plea agreement and stated that it will be held in November this year. The verdict was handed down on the 14th.
However, according to the indictment four years ago, Zhang Xiaolang may face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Yes, this case first occurred in 2018, four years after Zhang Xiaolang’s guilty plea. .
Four years ago, Zhang Xiaolang was sued
It is understood that Zhang Xiaolang graduated from the School of Information Science and Engineering at Southeast University in China, and then studied at the University of British Columbia from 2009 to 2011, and in 2015 On December 7, he was hired by Apple and joined the self-driving car project "Project Titan (Project Titan)", who is mainly responsible for designing and testing circuit boards to analyze sensor data in the project.
According to the 2018 indictment of the FBI (FBI), approximately 5,000 employees within Apple knew about the Titan project that year (Apple has not yet disclosed its plans to build a car), including 2,700 A "core employee" can access project materials and databases - and Zhang Xiaolang's work content determines that he is also one of the "core employees" and has access to an internal database, which contains business secrets and intellectual property rights about the Titan project.
Three years after joining Apple, Zhang Xiaolang returned to China with his family in April 2018 when his child was born and he was on paternity leave. A few days after the vacation ended, Zhang Xiaolang applied for resignation to his supervisor on April 30, because he wanted to return to China to take care of his mother, and revealed that he planned to work at Xiaopeng Motors after returning to China.
After this, Zhang Xiaolang was required to hand over all Apple devices, including two iPhones and a MacBook. Apple's security department also immediately closed Zhang Xiaolang's remote access, network access and a series of employee access rights. Before Zhang Xiaolang left, Apple also reminded him of the need to abide by its intellectual property policies. At that time, Zhang Xiaolang expressed his understanding and would abide by it.
Unexpectedly, when the Apple security team investigated Zhang Xiaolang’s network activities while he was working, they found that two days before he proposed to leave, that is, April 28 and 29, Zhang Xiaolang’s activity records on Apple’s intranet A significant increase, with 609 calls in two days - compared to 610 calls in the previous month. In addition, Apple also determined that Zhang Xiaolang downloaded Apple's trade secrets and information protected by intellectual property rights from various databases.
Not only that, Apple also discovered through surveillance that Zhang Xiaolang returned to the company during his paternity leave and took away two circuit boards and a server without permission.
Regarding all the above behaviors, Zhang Xiaolang did not deny it during the confrontation afterwards. After further investigation, he also admitted that he had transferred some confidential Apple technical information to his wife's computer through Airdrop, including a 25-page self-driving car circuit board design. At the same time, Apple's security department also discovered a 40GB folder on his computer, 60% of which contained Apple's confidential technical information, including the prototype of Apple's self-driving car, prototype vehicle requirements (power requirements, low voltage requirements, Battery systems, drivetrains, etc.) and more.
While Zhang Xiaolang was under investigation, the FBI discovered that he had purchased a flight ticket to Hangzhou, China, on July 7, and arrested him on the charge of "theft of trade secrets" before he boarded the plane. .
Xpeng responded: I am not aware of the matter.
When Zhang Xiaolang was arrested four years ago, he found a suitable next home in China, Xpeng Motors, which was pushed to the forefront.Faced with the ensuing doubts and suspicions, Xiaopeng issued a statement on July 11 that year: "It is not aware of this matter." "After Zhang Xiaolang left Apple, he He joined Xpeng Motors at the beginning of the month and signed an intellectual property compliance document on the same day. There is no record that he reported any sensitive or illegal situations to Xpeng Motors. "
Now, four years later, due to Zhang Xiaolang's latest guilty plea, Xiaopeng has been arrested again. Involved in the center of the topic, we also issued another statement today:
Statement on Apple’s prosecution of its former employee Zhang Xiaolang
We learned from the media today the latest developments in the case of former Apple employee Zhang Xiaolang’s alleged theft of Apple’s trade secrets. The case has been going on for more than four years. Xpeng Motors is not aware of the specific circumstances of the case, nor has it intervened in the subsequent investigation of the case by the U.S. judicial authorities. We have no relevant disputes with , Apple, , and have nothing to do with the case. association.
Xpeng Motors strictly abides by relevant laws and attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights. Xpeng Motors is China's leading company in autonomous driving assistance and will continue to adhere to the line of full-stack self-research. Thank you for your understanding and support of the facts!
This incident has attracted widespread attention from domestic netizens. In the opinion of many people, this is just Zhang Xiaolang’s personal behavior:
“It is obviously a personal issue, and some people insist on throwing dirty water on it. Xiaopeng. "
" It is estimated that the West cannot afford it, and it is suppressing the rise of new energy vehicles in China. "
Some people think that this case also confirms Apple. A car-building plan that has never been publicly acknowledged:
“Does this mean that Apple is serious about building a car?”
“Apple’s car-building is real, there is no doubt about it, but Apple’s road to building a car has encountered many setbacks, and Cook seems unwilling to invest resources in mass production, and the prospects are very bleak.”
In addition to the above discussion, some netizens pointed out that this is not the first time that Xiaopeng has encountered a similar incident.
According to CNBC, in January 2019, former Apple hardware engineer Jizhong Chen was also indicted for allegedly stealing Apple car project secrets. "Thousands of Apple trade secret files" were found in his computer and he tried to provide them As "a direct competitor of Apple's self-driving car project in China," foreign media Cultofmac directly named Xpeng Motors.
In response to this, Xpeng Motors responded quickly at the time: "We have never received a job application from this person, and we have not had any recruitment or business contact with this person." In addition, Jizhong Chen did not plead guilty to those charges. .
Not only Apple, Tesla also sued Xpeng Motors senior engineer Cao Guangzhi for stealing trade secrets in July 2019, accusing him of uploading a zip file of Tesla Autopilot source code to his personal iCloud account. In this regard, Cao Guangzhi admitted this move (he was still working at Tesla at the time), but denied stealing Tesla's sensitive information, and said that he had "efforts to delete a large number of documents about Tesla" before leaving his job.
Fortunately, in April 2021, Tesla and Cao Guangzhi reached an out-of-court settlement. Cao Guangzhi also emphasized again that he had never disclosed the Autopilot source code to Xpeng Motors, allowing Xpeng to be innocent.
I have to say that Xiaopeng was innocently involved in employee theft incidents three times before and after. Xiaopeng's luck is indeed a bit "backward", but as one netizen said: "Xpeng has a lot of its own technologies, and you can't deny it just because of one person." The entire Xiaopeng.”
reference link:
https://www.scribd.com/document/3836066 62/Complaint-against-Xiaolang-Zhang
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/22/former-apple-employee-xiaolang-zhang-pleads-guilty-.html
