Ex-Apple Engineer Sentenced to 4 Months for Trade Secrets Theft

A former Apple Inc. engineer was sentenced to 120 days in prison for stealing proprietary information from the company while preparing to go work for a Chinese startup that makes electric cars with autonomous driving features.

Zhang Xiaolang pleaded guilty in August 2022 to a single count of trade-secret theft. US prosecutors had accused Zhang of downloading a 25-page Apple document to his wife’s computer that included schematic drawings of a circuit board design for a portion of an autonomous vehicle.

In a final judgment issued Tuesday, US District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, proposed that Zhang serve ...