Apple sues former designer over alleged stolen secrets Chris Davies - Mar 11, 2021, 3:07pm CST Apple is suing a former MacBook designer, alleging that he sold unreleased product details to a journalist in return for favorable coverage as he left the Cupertino firm for a startup. Simon Lancaster had been Advanced Materials and Prototyping lead at Apple until he resigned in November 2019, but a new lawsuit accuses him of copying trade secrets from other projects so that he could supply them to an “outside media correspondent” currently unnamed. After leaving Apple, Lancaster joined Arris Composites as Head of Consumer Products, according to his LinkedIn profile. The company has developed a system called Additive Molding, in which composite structures can be manufactured with a mixture of continuously aligned fibers, electronics, and metallic components.