Indian engineer faces legal action from Google for allegedly leaking chip design secrets

Google has initiated legal proceedings against Harshit Roy, a former employee, accusing him of stealing and disseminating confidential chip design information. The lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court, claims that Roy shared trade secrets on social media platforms such as X and LinkedIn, tagging competitors like Apple and Qualcomm.

Roy, who worked at Google from 2020 to early 2024 on Pixel device chip designs, left the company in February 2024. He later moved to the United States in August for doctoral studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Shortly after, he allegedly began posting confidential Google documents online, including internal Pixel chip design details.

The lawsuit states that Roy's social media posts included remarks like “don’t expect me to adhere to any confidentiality agreement,” and he disregarded Google's requests to remove the content. The posts reportedly continued 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 claims that Roy's actions were aimed at harming the company by exposing sensitive information to competitors. The tech giant is seeking unspecified monetary damages and court orders to prevent further dissemination of the confidential information.

This case underscores ongoing tensions between tech companies and employees over intellectual property and trade secrets. By pursuing this lawsuit, Google appears to be reinforcing its dedication to safeguarding its proprietary information in the competitive chip design sector.