Google sues former engineer who allegedly leaked online critical trade secrets

A former Google employee is being taken to court over allegedly leaking trade secrets about the company's Google Pixel smartphone.

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Google has officially filed a lawsuit against a former employee for allegedly leaking trade secrets following his departure from the company. According to Google's legal action filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, Harshit Roy, a former Google employee whose LinkedIn's page states he was at the company for four years starting in 2020, is allegedly responsible for the distribution of internal documents revealing the hardware inside future generation Google Pixel smartphones.

According to the legal action, Roy, who was responsible for the design, development, and optimization of unreleased System-on-Chip (SoC) onto Pixel smartphones, posted confidential information on X about the unreleased chips, shared internal Google documents, and threatened Google with further disclosures. Additionally, Google alleges Roy ignored takedown requests for all of the leaked content he posted, along with Google's effort to resolve the matter "without judicial intervention."

Google alleges Roy has leaked 158 photographs of confidential information about SoC's within Pixel smartphones, such as the strengths, specifications, etc. Roy reportedly signed a confidentiality agreement with Google in 2020, and Google feels it should be compensated an unspecified figure of money in damages for the leaked information.

Google's Secrets:

• An internal 78-page document consisting of proprietary non-public schematics and details about an SoC, including its audio and sensor processing capabilities;
• An internal 110-page document consisting of proprietary non-public schematics and details about the SoC, including its video processing capabilities;
• An internal 12-page document that provides details about the SoC's architecture, including past and future roadmaps documenting the SoC's development;
• An internal 24-page document includes schematics and details about the SoC's security features.