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Businesses The Courts Apple

Apple Sues iPhone CPU Design Ace After He Quits To Run Data center Chip Upstart Nuvia (theregister.co.uk) 100

Posted by msmash from the see-you-in-court dept.
Apple is suing the former chief architect of its iPhone and iPad microprocessors, who in February quit to co-found a data-center chip design biz. From a report: In a complaint filed in the Santa Clara Superior Court, in California, USA, and seen by The Register, the Cupertino goliath claimed Gerard Williams, CEO of semiconductor upstart Nuvia, broke his Apple employment agreement while setting up his new enterprise. Williams -- who oversaw the design of Apple's custom high-performance mobile Arm-compatible processors for nearly a decade -- quit the iGiant in February to head up the newly founded Nuvia. The startup officially came out of stealth mode at the end of November, boasting it had bagged $53m in funding. It appears to be trying to design silicon chips, quite possibly Arm-based ones, for data center systems; it is being coy right now with its plans and intentions.

[...] Apple's lawsuit alleged Williams hid the fact he was preparing to leave Apple to start his own business while still working at Apple, and drew on his work in steering iPhone processor design to create his new company. Crucially, Tim Cook & Co's lawyers claimed he tried to lure away staff from his former employer. All of this was, allegedly, in breach of his contract. The iGiant also reckoned Williams had formed the startup in hope of being bought by Apple to produce future systems for its data centers. [...] Apple's side of the story, however, has been challenged by Williams, who accused the Mac giant of wrongdoing. Last month, his team hit back with a counter argument alleging that Apple doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. The paperwork states Apple's employment contract provisions in this case are not enforceable under California law: they argue the language amounts to a non-compete clause, which is, generally speaking, a no-no in the Golden State. Thus, they say, Williams was allowed to plan and recruit for his new venture while at Apple. [...] They also allege that Apple's evidence in its complaint, notably text messages he exchanged with another Apple engineer and conversations with his eventual Nuvia co-founders, were collected illegally by the highly paranoid iPhone maker.
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Apple Sues iPhone CPU Design Ace After He Quits To Run Data center Chip Upstart Nuvia More

Apple Sues iPhone CPU Design Ace After He Quits To Run Data center Chip Upstart Nuvia

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    • This sort of thing is really self defeating anyway. If they wipe the floor with this guy, do you think the next bunch of ambitious grads are going to be jumping up and down to sign employment contracts with Apple? All relationships go both ways, and if it has come to this, someone at Apple has completely mismanaged the relationship as well, likely by not providing opportunities to an employee who is clearly talented enough to warrant attention, or not properly preempting a relationship breakdown at the seni

      • Re:Self Defeating (Score:5, Insightful)

        by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @11:36AM (#59504462) Homepage

        He probably never would have wanted to leave if he was compensated and appreciated properly. People always argue for the CEO making big money, but ignore the people who actually drive product success. Apple could have made him filthy rich without breaking a sweat, but probably didn't because they thought he would immediately retire with that kind of money. Looks like he will leave anyway, so they'll really regret that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Arkham ( 10779 )

          Or he was compensated well enough that money isn't the motivating factor anymore. If he had been given some significant Apple stock 10 years ago as part of his package (common in Silicon Valley), he probably can retire now, so he's doing something else that he thinks will be more fun.

          As someone sitting in golden handcuffs, I can relate.

      • What exactly are they planning to do since he doesn't seem to be even competing with them? Get him to pay back a few $10k salary?

        Look at the end of Apple's complaint [regmedia.co.uk]. While it's normal to put a laundry list of "prayers for relief", given his position in the new company, it sounds like they want to kill his company stone cold dead.

        I suspect it's all about locking up talent in Apple, we've seen that in the non-poaching cartel Steve Jobs started up, poaching for his startup is one of their complaints, they wa

    • Actually it sort of does, I think it is called the doctrine of unclean hands.

  • SOP (Score:3)

    by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian.bixby@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @11:04AM (#59504340)

    Well, sounds like standard procedure for Apple, if you're any good at what you do they'll try to make sure you never work again if you dare to abandon them. Hopefully the backers were aware that the first $50 million is going to have to be devoted to legal expenses.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by blahbooboo ( 839709 )

      Well, sounds like standard procedure for Apple, if you're any good at what you do they'll try to make sure you never work again if you dare to abandon them. Hopefully the backers were aware that the first $50 million is going to have to be devoted to legal expenses.

      Or perhaps Apple is in the right here? We really don’t know all the facts. Apple hasn’t been one to just frivolously sue people.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Apple hasn’t been one to just frivolously sue people.

        What? This has been their knee-jerk reaction to anything they didn't like ever since they graduated from Woz's parents' garage. Most of the time they don't even care if they win or not, the purpose is to punish the ones being sued.

      • Or perhaps Apple is in the right here?

        Says the obvious shill. What little has come out so far suggests that Apple should've pulled this someplace other than their beloved Kalifornia, where the flipside of having too many laws is that sometimes some of them - such as those that ban non-competes - actually accomplish some good ("broken clock syndrome, " if you will)...

      • We -do- know all the facts. He is not being accused of stealing technology. That would be potentially criminal. California law is extremely clear and very black and white. He can start up his own company while working for Apple in California as long as he is doing it on his own time and with his own equipment and other resources. He is also 100% legal to solicit his coworkers as long as he's not doing it on company time. It looks like -at worst- he -may- have texted them using a company owned phone (ho

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
          As a juror I would never buy for a minute that an iPhone can reliably text without crashing. Or did Apple issue him a Pixel? ;-)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
        Those sorts of employment contracts are unenforceable.

        They can sue him if he takes their intellectual property. But it sounded like he saw something that can be improved and is trying to improve it. They can't treat him like a slave. He's free to start a new company doing similar work as long as he doesn't steal what Apple owns. And I suspect that there will be quite a few architectural differences between a datacenter chip and a mobile device chip.

        Apple is just being Apple. They can't innovate anymore
  • Those who can't, sue.

  • Apple really hates California's non-compete policy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mangastudent ( 718064 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @11:05AM (#59504346)

    Despite it being the number one reason the California Bay area became the world's undisputed leader in its sort of technology, going back to the period right after the birth of the transitory, Apple hates California's long standing policy of making non-competes unenforceable. Quite notably, it was Steve Jobs who organized the non-poaching cartel [wikipedia.org] between Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay (Facebook was just getting going at the time, and flatly turned him down).

    Fortunately, you can't design chips on a shoestring budget, so the company should have enough of a war chest to deal with this entirely predicable f***ery. Who knows how many "can economize by eating ramen" startups it's suppressed with this attitude, the extreme levels of internal, siloed secrecy, and how much this contributes to the their regular bouts of awful software. When it's said "even granny knows not to upgrade iOS" you should know you have a problem.

    • When you the big fish you don't like the small fishes advantages.

      When I work for a big organization, I use the organization size to my benefit to get what I need. Making tougher deals, better contracts for my org.... Because we know that not working with us will cost more to them then meeting our demands, and any of quarks.

      When I work for a small organization. I need to to be nimble and clever. I find loopholes in the contracts to take advantage of. Find allies in the larger partner who I work with. This i

    • Re:Apple really hates California's non-compete pol (Score:4, Interesting)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @12:04PM (#59504598)
      If you read the summary, Apple is not claiming non-compete exactly. They are claiming he started this other company at the same time he was working for Apple. High level execs normally have contracts which would expressly forbid this. Now if he founded this other company after left Apple, then Apple doesn’t have much to complain about.

      • If you read the summary, Apple is not claiming non-compete exactly. They are claiming he started this other company at the same time he was working for Apple.

        Not exactly.

        Apple's lawsuit alleged Williams hid the fact he was preparing to leave Apple to start his own business while still working at Apple,

        He was preparing to start his own business. That could just mean networking. I don't know whether his contract was written in such a way as to make even that illegal, but that's still different.

        • "I don't know whether his contract was written in such a way"

          and this is where we need improved regulation. Preventing businesses from even being able to write unenforceable items in contracts. Too much leeway is given for threatening people while very little is given for taking on risk. It's insane that businesses are able to screw you up front while suing for compensation takes a back seat. Too many regulations support big business being monopolistic ass-hats while nearly zero regulations protect peop

          • I guess if you think your current company not wanting you to start up a possible competitor and trying to recruit people WHILE you are still working for them needs “improved regulation.” By the way, this is currently a contract dispute as in it is not part of any regulations per se.
        • Preparing could also be filing legal paperwork, renting office space, hiring people, etc. Certainly Apple thinks he was trying to recruit people during that time. We will need more details.

          • Preparing could also be filing legal paperwork, renting office space, hiring people, etc. Certainly Apple thinks he was trying to recruit people during that time. We will need more details.

            If he was filing legal paperwork to start a new company while still working at Apple, and his contract forbade the same, then he acted quite stupidly. It is much more likely they are claiming he violated his contract unofficially, in off-the-record venues. I read that this is meant to be a chilling lawsuit, to discourage other high-productivity employees from dreaming to big while drawing an Apple paycheck.

            • There have been other high profile departures where Apple didn’t sue so you can believe what you want. For example Chris Lattner was in charge of and had a major role in Clang and later Swift.
      • No. No. No. a thousand times no. This is California law. He can be an executive and sign any fucking thing but that part of his contract isn't worth a bucket of cold piss in California. He can start his new company while still working for Apple as long as he doesn't use Apple time or resources to do it. Period. End of story. The law is super clear. There is no room for ambiguity on this. Apple's case is already lost before it got started. Dead. Kaputsky. Fin. Over. Done. Stick a fork in it.
        • Oh really? Please show me the case law where an executive can work for two different companies at the same time when one employment contract forbids it. California non-competes ban apply to former employers not being able to restrict the next job of a former employee. The key word is “former” not “current”. If you are an hourly worker, generally there is no such provision however executives have different and detailed contracts about what they can and cannot do. Informing the company

      • Or perhaps Apple is in the right here? We really don’t know all the facts. Apple hasn’t been one to just frivolously sue people.

        It's frivolously suing people right now, as in this example. It's basically acting like a jealous girlfriend who can't accept that the guy did the breaking up instead of her. What he does on his own time isn't Apple's concern as long as it doesn't interfere with his doing his job at Apple. Unless Apple can demonstrate such, then it's completely in the wrong, and even Apple knows it, but since it's pretty much standard practice there to sue everyone for whatever it can, it's making a big deal out of this.

    • "so the company should have enough of a war chest to deal with this entirely predicable f***ery."

      No, the regulatory landscape needs to change to prevent this "predictable f***ery*. This right here is a clear sign that regulations are failing left, right, and center. It's one of the reason we need fewer regulations not more.

      Your politicians are for sale folks, stop giving them the power needed to rent seek from these businesses and stop giving these businesses storefronts where they can buy laws that benef

      • The only regulatory change that would accomplish your goals would be ending civil lawsuits, requiring people who seeks remedies to use "self help", which the history of feuds and vendettas show is a very bad thing.

        Any asshole like Apple can file a lawsuit, the question is, how far will it get?

        • No, there is no reason to end those. The problem is the law allowing them to sue over this kind of stuff too easily. The bar just needs to be raised higher. In short litigation is too easy. A lot of people bitch about universal healthcare paid for by government but why are we doing that before we do that for the legal system? You want to solve problems? Solve that one first!

          The cost of a lawsuit is the primary problem. The ability to run a business into the ground using the injustice system, the abil

          • How many times has tort reform been discussed? It is still needed.

            Tort reform isn't a magical fix-all. A plaintiff of modest means with a perfectly valid case can often be "persuaded" to settle or drop their case by a well-heeled defendant with a salaried legal staff that's able and willing to bury them under endless motions, continuances, and truckloads of paperwork that will cost them thousands of dollars in legal fees while incurring almost no additional cost to the defendant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Fewer regulations mean more room for lawyers to engage in asshattery. What we need are fewer lawyers.

  • Pay Better (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @11:07AM (#59504350)
    No one would have left if Apple had paid them better. What anyone else wants to offer Apple employees for their labor is none of Apple’s business. I don’t know what the employees would have cost to retain, but I know lawyers aren’t cheap.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lazypete ( 863757 )
      Its not just pay... at some point you feel you cannot grow if you dont change. You need new challenges and you feel you wont have where you are. If it was a question of pay they would have payed him for sure... These are the kind of brains no one want to loose.

      • If they didn't want to loose them they should have tightened them.

      • New horizons and opportunities still have a value. There’re jobs you or I’d still be working if they paid us enough to stay. As the old joke goes, we’re already established that we’re whores, now we’re just arguing over price.

        The only people who chase these opportunities are either young naive idealists or people with enough “fuck you” money that another hundred thousand doesn’t change anything for them. Most people don’t fall into those buckets. I

      • Its not just pay... at some point you feel you cannot grow if you dont change.

        Sure. Apple should be doing more things, though. They're sitting on billions of dollars because Tim Apple doesn't have the vision to spend it growing into other markets and/or industries.

        • They're sitting on billions of dollars because Tim Apple doesn't have the vision to spend it growing into other markets and/or industries.

          Which underlines how ludicrous this lawsuit is. Sure, Apple has great ARM technology. Sure, they could start a sideline of server chips, or even servers. But we know as long as Tim Apple is running things, there's absolutely no chance of Apple doing either.

          Which come to think of it is wise. I mean, this is a company that doesn't even care if their keyboards are reliab

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            At one point Apple made servers based on the Mac OS, and a school that was a customer of the IT support contractor i worked for installed some of them. Fortunately everything Apple fell into my co-worker's area of responsibility. Within three days these barely-junior high kids had already hacked them because there was essentially no security on them at all, four days after installation he found LimeWire and Napster had been installed on it as well as some remote control software (DameWare?). A week after

    • No one would have left if Apple had paid them better. What anyone else wants to offer Apple employees for their labor is none of Apple’s business. I don’t know what the employees would have cost to retain, but I know lawyers aren’t cheap.

      He may simply have tired of the Apple culture, or just wanted to start something. I doubt money was a concern for him.

  • Non-compete in the People's Republic? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fuzznutz ( 789413 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @11:14AM (#59504374)

    Apple's lawsuit alleged Williams hid the fact he was preparing to leave Apple to start his own business while still working at Apple

    Translation: We paid you a lot of money so we own your thoughts. You're not allowed to think about leaving while on our payroll.

    They also allege that Apple's evidence in its complaint, notably text messages he exchanged with another Apple engineer and conversations with his eventual Nuvia co-founders, were collected illegally by the highly paranoid iPhone maker.

    So much for the legendary privacy advocate, Apple. Apparently privacy is only permitted if you don't cross Apple.

    • So much for the legendary privacy advocate, Apple. Apparently privacy is only permitted if you don't cross Apple.

      If you are operating on company devices on company time likely on a company line or company network you shouldn't really expect any level of privacy. In fact I'd find it hard to believe this wasn't spelled out in the fine print of some pre-employment paperwork.

  • So wage slave is a real thing. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ITRambo ( 1467509 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @11:14AM (#59504376)
    He started his own firm. Apple is mad. So, they're treating him as if they owned him. If he followed the letter of his contract, he should be fine. Otherwise, he's an idiot.

    • He started his own firm. Apple is mad. So, they're treating him as if they owned him. If he followed the letter of his contract, he should be fine. Otherwise, he's an idiot.

      I don't know about owning him as in Slave-Trade; but I am 100% sure that if Apple catches wind that he is using any of the "Trade Secrets" (let alone Patented) design techniques he Developed while at Apple, I would bet that they will stomp his little startup into dust.

      Non-Compete does not mean "I can just hop over here, start another company, and develop a carbon-copy of my old Projects", or that use proprietary designs he Developed while at Apple.

      Yes, you own your own brain; but almost every engineering R

      • Look: I hate Non-Competes, too; but OTOH, Apple does have the right to make sure its Trade Secrets and Patent Knowledge doesn't walk out the door with the exiting Employee.

        Do you mean knowledge already revealed in patents?

        Trade secrets are hard for most companies to establish, but I'll bet Apple jumps through the legal hoops well enough. But we're talking about a chip that's shipped in zillions of iOS devices, you lose a lot when you provide something that can be analyzed layer by layer. Design techniques

      • " but almost every engineering R&D employment contract contains language to the effect of "While you work here, all your brain belong to us."
         
        What? Since when?

        • " but almost every engineering R&D employment contract contains language to the effect of "While you work here, all your brain belong to us." What? Since when?

          All my working life in the last N decades, working outside of California where specific, albeit I think fairly new law, and certainly the mores of Silicon Valley, make such contract provisions unenforceable.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by afidel ( 530433 )

            No, it's not new law. The CA professional business code section 16600 which is the basis of court rulings in CA was added in 1941.

            16600. Except as provided in this chapter, every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that extent void.

            • Isn't that a or the non-compete thing? Although as far as I can remember, the prohibition on non-competes goes back a lot further than 1941.

              Because what I'm referring to was added in 1979, and amended in 1991 [ca.gov], from my search the proper citation might be "LAB [section sign] 2870":

              ARTICLE 3.5. Inventions Made by an Employee [2870 - 2872]

              2870. (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or he

    • The contract language is irrelevant. If you sign a contract selling yourself as a slave, it doesn't hold up because slavery is illegal, regardless of contract law. Same thing holds here for non-compete agreements in CA; they are illegal.

  • This is not a Non-compete (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @11:20AM (#59504396)

    The Ex-Employee is correct. California does not allow the enforcement of a non-compete agreements but that's not what this is..

    While you are working for one company, you may NOT engage in behavior that constitutes a conflict of interest unless you TELL your current employer about it and they are OK with it. To that end, You may NOT "poach" your current employer's employees by soliciting them (you cannot initiate the conversation) as you move on. However, you MAY announce your departure and if fellow employees ask if there are jobs for them, you can take them with you. I know, it's a fine line... But somewhere between "I'm working for Apple" and "I'm going to start a competing company to Apple" you cross that line and have to be very careful. However, once you are no longer on Apple's payroll, all bets are off again.

    Where I don't know what evidence Apple has beyond the text messages, I find it pretty hard to believe they have enough to make this stick. Unless this guy was incredibly stupid (which doesn't seem to be the case) and actually solicited Apple employees while working for Apple and left hard evidence behind, this is going to be pretty hard to prove in court. However this is Civil court.. The burden of proof is much lower here. At the very least, Apple expects to tie this small startup up in court and drain their resources through legal fees. If they win, all the better for Apple, if they don't, they may be able to bleed them to death. It's a win, win for Apple.

    • Re:This is not a Non-compete (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @11:25AM (#59504420) Homepage Journal

      "While you are working for one company, you may NOT engage in behavior that constitutes a conflict of interest unless you TELL your current employer about it and they are OK with it."
       
      What? Since when?
      "To that end, You may NOT "poach" your current employer's employees by soliciting them (you cannot initiate the conversation) as you move on."
       
      What? Since when?

      • The misused idea of salary in tech where your "hours" are 24/7 so anything you do any time of day that they don't agree with is abusing your paid time.

      • Er what? Since forever. If I’m working for any company as a high level exec, I can start up a new company that could directly compete with that company. However, I would expect my company to sue me. Now if I quit my job first, there is less legally they can do.

        • Um, what? That is literally how Silicon Valley was formed. Execs left companies and started other competing companies. You can do whatever you want. The idea that you CAN NOT do this or that is nonsense.

          • For those who want specifics, here's the starting point [wikipedia.org], the "traitorous eight" as labeled by their brilliant, but impossible ex-boss.
          • And people get sued all the time when this happens. It is up to the employer (in this case Apple) whether they want to file suit over a contract dispute. Are you going to argue that Apple doesn’t have a right to do so? I’d love to hear your legal reasonings for that.

      • Forever.
        The Woz was legally required to pitch the Apple Computer to his overloads at HP, which he did. Apple only exists because they turned it down.

        • California law specifically about work you do in your own time has changed since then. Here we have an edge case, are server chips or things based on them in Apple's anticipated future lines of business? In Woz's case, he'd still have wanted to clear it with HP, since they had long been making all sorts of small computational widgets for engineers [wikipedia.org].

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            , are server chips or things based on them in Apple's anticipated future lines of business?

            By all the gods I hope not, their last attempt at servers was a dreadful disaster.

        • No he wasn't. Christ. Where do people get these ideas? He WANTED HP to do it. He wasn't legally required to.

      • Since it was enshrined in California law.. This is a State Law issue about poaching employees.

        California has made non-competes unenforceable, but that does NOT mean you can solicit fellow employees to follow you as you walk out the door. You have a *duty* to work for your employer when you are on their payroll and you may NOT take advantage of proprietary information such as employee names and phone numbers. You can announce you are leaving, but you may not say "we are looking for people", or contact c

        • You have a *duty* to work for your employer when you are on their payroll and you may NOT take advantage of proprietary information such as employee names and phone numbers.

          You have some case law to back that up? Because California laws are so employee friendly they allow salesmen to continue calling on customers from their previous employee!!! Seriously, here's an article citing 2-3 cases [carr-mcclellan.com].

          "Proprietary information" is not useful legal language; it would fall under trade secret law, yes? Usefully, the abo

        • No. As long as you're not using company resources or time you have the god given right to solicit the hell out of your former coworkers or soon to be former. The company can sue you for anything no matter how stupidly wrong you are. But their right to sue has nothing to do with your freedom to talk to whoever the hell you want. Happens every single day in the valley. Every single day. The reason this is news is because "omg, Apple, wtf are you thinking?"

          • Former - Sure, you can solicit them AFTER you are not on the payroll.

            Soon to be Former? Not so much. You can tell them you are leaving BUT you cannot initiate a conversation about possible positions for them at your destination in an effort to get them to leave with you. The restriction is on you recruiting... Now you CAN discuss possible jobs for them if THEY bring it up upon hearing of your intention to leave, you just cannot bring it up.

            Practically though, let's admit that it's a hard sell to take a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      But somewhere between "I'm working for Apple" and "I'm going to start a competing company to Apple" you cross that line and have to be very careful.

      Apple makes data center tech?

      • CPUs. Apple does make CPUs which this company is interested in making too. The problem isn’t what tech. The problem is Apple is claiming that he was working for Apple while starting up another company. If he quit first there would be less of an issue.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

          CPUs. Apple does make CPUs which this company is interested in making too. The problem isn’t what tech. The problem is Apple is claiming that he was working for Apple while starting up another company. If he quit first there would be less of an issue.

          It's CPUs, but not CPUs for the same market. If I work for, say, GM designing auto engines and decide to start up a new company making motorcycle engines, can GM sue me? Jony Ive did basically the same thing.

          And according to the summary, he quit in February and took his business live in November.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            They can sue all day long, they have piles of money and herds of lawyers on retainer. They probably wouldn't win, but that's not the purpose of these types of suits. They just intend to scare away investors and destroy the startup with a mountain of legal bills as a lesson to others who want to leave their company to start their own. It's much the same thing as the SLAPP suits that companies bring against consumer advocate groups.

          • Again it’s not the tech. It’s the timeline of events. According to Apple allegations he started the company while still at Apple.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • By your logic what Apple designs and puts into a product that is sold can never be protected because they don’t sell the part by itself. Sony’s PS3 cell processor is free to be copied by anyone. Is that your logic?

    • I'm going to start a competing company to Apple

      It's going to be hard to prove that the new company is in competition with Apple given that they are developing data centre CPUs and Apple has practically zero presence in data centres.

      • It doesn't matter... If he poached employees improperly, then Apple has a case. If he solicited others to leave and recruited as he was walking out the door, Apple may be able to collect civil damages.

        Of course, filing a lawsuit is a LONG way from winning one and Apple has a huge lift here. But I don't think they intend to win, they just intend to FUD the new company to death because this guy ticked them off for some reason.

        And by the way... Apple DOES sell servers... Incredibly high priced but a niche mar

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • What did Keller do right that this guy did wrong? Keller didn't start his own company, but he's worked for AMD; Tesla; and Intel since he left Apple. And perhaps elsewhere.

    He helped develop Zen at AMD, and he's allegedly working on Ocean Cove for Intel now.

  • I mean if you're so good that you can get $53 million in venture capital right away, wouldn't pretty much everyone involved -- and especially the financial backers -- have this all figured out?

    I mean surely they must expect legal action by Apple and fully understand this guy's employment contract and legal exposure.

    I would think "dealing with Apple's hissy fits" would be right up at the top of the to-do list, with all the contingencies worked out right away.

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