Indian engineer facing legal prosecution from Google for allegedly disclosing chip design secrets.

News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 2nd December 2024

Google has launched legal action against former employee Harshit Roy, accusing him of obtaining and spreading proprietary chip design information. The case, filed in a Texas federal court, alleges that Roy published trade secrets on social media platforms including X and LinkedIn, tagging competitors like as Apple and Qualcomm.

Roy, who worked at Google from 2020 to early 2024 on Pixel smartphone chip designs, left in February 2024. He later came to the United States in August to pursue PhD studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Shortly after, he allegedly began publishing confidential Google materials online, including internal Pixel chip design specifications.

According to the lawsuit, Roy’s social media posts contained the phrase “don’t expect me to adhere to any confidentiality agreement,” and he ignored Google’s efforts to remove the content. The positions were supposedly open until October 2024.

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda remarked, “After an investigation, we found that this former employee stole numerous documents, and we’re pursuing legal action against them for the repeated and unauthorised disclosure of confidential company information. This behaviour is something we will simply not tolerate.”

Google argues that Roy’s activities were intended to hurt the company by disclosing critical information to competitors. The IT behemoth is seeking unspecified monetary damages and court orders to prevent further disclosure of the secret material. This case highlights the continuous conflict between IT businesses and employees over intellectual property and trade secrets. By filing this case, Google appears to be reaffirming its commitment to protecting its proprietary secrets in the competitive chip design business.