Magic Leap Stumbles in Secrets Fight With China-Bound Engineer
- Startup accused former employee of stealing its technology
- U.S. judge says lawsuit is ‘devoid’ of specific allegations
A visitor tries a virtual reality helmet Magic Leap One during the Virtuality Paris 2019 show.
Photographer: Chesnot/Getty Images
Magic Leap Inc., the maker of augmented-reality headsets backed by Alphabet Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., didn’t get far with a lawsuit accusing a former engineer of stealing its technology to launch a rival business in China.
A federal judge in San Jose, California, on Wednesday granted a request by Chi Xu, who left Magic Leap in 2016, to throw out the case. She found that Magic Leap didn’t adequately allege that Xu exploited proprietary information to build his own mixed-reality glasses, which project digital objects onto the real world. But U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh gave Magic Leap a chance to revise its complaint to address her concerns.