Apple to Settle Trade Secret Lawsuit With SoC Startup Rivos

[jlc1978]

Go Team America.

Yea. although even in the EU companies find ways to legally fire workers at will via short term employment contracts that do not get renewed. Lawyers always find ways around laws and courts have to decide what is legal even if it is not ethical.

In Rivos' case, I was not surprised they settled, even if they had a strong case as a loss on any points likely would cripple the company. A Pyrrhic victory would be a bad outcome.

I suspect, based on this from Bloomberg:

"The agreement provides for remediation of Apple confidential information based on a forensic examination of Rivos systems and other activities," according to the filing in federal court in San Jose, California. "The parties currently are working through that process."

Rivos probably realized they needed to settle rather than risk a loss in court over trade secrets; even if they won on the hiring issue. getting chips to market and becoming a viable option will be hard enough without fighting Apple at teh same time.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

If proven, shouldn't the workers be held personally responsible? That's terrible and unacceptable behaviour.

You could potentially go after the employees but from Apple’s perspective it’s much more profitable to go after the employers who benefited from stolen info. I doubt the individual employees would be worth more than a few millions even if they were forced into bankruptcy, while a licensing deal would be worth a lot more.

 

[jlc1978]

You could potentially go after the employees but from Apple’s perspective it’s much more profitable to go after the employers who benefited from stolen info. I doubt the individual employees would be worth more than a few millions even if they were forced into bankruptcy, while a licensing deal would be worth a lot more.

I would guess it's not s much the money as stopping Rivos from using any of Apple's IP; so they go after Rivvos and the employees are merely part of the suit but not the focus. It would not surprise me if the settlement allowed Apple to verify no trade secrets were used or had licensing terms.

 

[techwhiz]

Theft of intellectual property is illegal and punishable by prison time and fines. If they stole IP and secrets they should be prosecuted.

On the other hand poaching employees is perfectly legal and anti-compete clauses aren't worth the paper they are printed on; unless the company is willing to pay you to keep you benched. Companies have done it before. Barring that, they prevent you from making a living and in California it's against public policy to prevent a person from gainful employment.

I'm a chip design engineer. There is nothing I have ever designed that I could not do better if I go back and do it again. I do t need old documents to do it. I may not remember every line of Verilog, but I do remember the deficiency in design and I can correct that from the ground up.

In reality the fear should be that a good engineer can redesign whatever it is in about half the time it to to design it the first time

 

[obviouslogic]

apple getting a taste of their own medicine stop stealing other peoples idea

There's noting illegal about "stealing" an idea. An idea is not patentable. What is patentable is what it took to make that idea actually work.

An employee applying what they learned from their previous company at a new company is also not illegal, unless what they've learned was patented by the previous company.

Stealing documents from your previous employer is in fact illegal. Not sure I've heard of a case where a new employee of Apple was accused of that?

 

[gund1234]

I believe it is possible to disable Airdrop via MDM, so why didn't Apple at least try to disable this feature to prevent this vector of data transfer?

that will make all employees life miserable.
restricting features in office will reduce productivity.
all this just because of few bad employees.
if they block airdrop they will use USB or find something else.

 

[gund1234]

Doesn't Apple "poach" employees from other companies all the time?

How chip manufacturing works is not really a secret and if Apple wants to protect a chip design, it needs to patent it. You can't stop an employee from using what he has learned.

poaching employees is probably ok.
Taking data with you when you leave the company is not.
Nothing is a secret anymore.
there are no restrictions on stealing technology.
even if it is not secret it takes years to develop technology and use that technology to manufacture a sellable product using that technology.

 

[cqexbesd]

Instead, write personal code on your nights and weekends in the same language you're using at work, but aiming at a different application for the code. This way you have a code base to refer to when you're no longer on the project, and your former employer will have no rights to it.

That is country specific. In the UK for example its quite possible the employer owns that code as well. The law isn't 100% clear but the little case law tends to side with the employers.

Being done on weekends, on private devices, can help your argument that it belongs to you but is not sufficient on it's own. One question is if the work could conceivably have been required of you by your employer or would such a direction, were it to be given, be outside your employment relationship. If you are a software developer and the work you did was writing software I think you would have an uphill battle if a dispute arose.

Of course this is rarely put to the test because in most cases its not worth pursuing from the employers side.

Just to be clear I am not saying I agree with this system, just trying to avoid misunderstandings. Here is one reference to get you started: https://www.russell-cooke.co.uk/new...hts-in-the-course-of-employment-who-owns-what

 

[1129846]

It's strange that they are even allowed to do that.

Oh completely agree. It should be changed on those employment contracts/ non competes that are blatantly illegal/ non enforceable have some major punishment attach to them. Like if they want to sue for non compete and they loose they have to pay all legal cost and it could include some punitive damages.

I have been under some massive unenforceable non compete and I will admit I played a little loose knowing they would not even try to exercise it because it was unenforceable. I am under a non compete/ non poaching one with my current employer but it is super narrowed scope and very clear. Non compete/ non poaching much be super narrow scoped.

 

[jlc1978]

I have been under some massive unenforceable non compete and I will admit I played a little loose knowing they would not even try to exercise it because it was unenforceable. I am under a non compete/ non poaching one with my current employer but it is super narrowed scope and very clear. Non compete/ non poaching much be super narrow scoped.

One employer had a non-solicit rather than non-compete. I felt that was very fair, since as a consultant any other job that used my skills would compete, and such a clause would prevent me from working in my profession. OTOH, I felt it was reasonable that I not take my client list and call them to solicit work. It didn't prevent me from working for former clients, as long as they called me, as some did, or some other company got the work and hired me. Fair all around, in my situation.

 

[1129846]

FYI, every company I work for, I always take a copy of all the code I've worked on. Never with any intention to share that company's proprietary work, but merely for my own personal reference to what I've done and how I did it. Sometimes I want to use a similar coding technique, and it's very useful to be able to reference my old code. It's also useful for updating my resume, or doing a refresh before an interview.

While I will not confirm or deny if I have done that do make sure you are super careful as that can get you in a lot of legal trouble for thief. God forbid the code got leaked and was used by someone to do damage you again are liable if they traced it back to you.

Also depending on how you left you might not even want even the slightest of appearance.

Again I say be careful. I will admit I have code from at least one of my former employers but we parted on very good terms and they knew I had a copy of it. The agreement was I never upload it to cloud. 8 years now I still honor that agreement.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Ironic how the "land of the free" is more controlled, locked down, and surveilled than just about every other "democracy" on Earth. In America corporations are more important than people and plenty of people line up to defend this insanity. Just look at some of the Apple fans on this site...

Yeah, I always laugh when some American get's all small man syndrome about their backwater refusal to use the metric system, and talk about their "freedom units". I'm pretty sure it's actually "delusion of freedom units".

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

I don't know where you live, but unless it's China--where theft of trade secrets seems to be considered an artform and encouraged, never punished--you'll probably find that it's illegal if you had reason to know that it was proprietary information or trade secret.

Yeah sure farmboy, you're an expert on international law huh.