Rivos countersues Apple: forcing employees to sign restriction agreements and stifling the growth of start-ups
CTOnews.com, Sept. 26 (Xinhua)-- Rivos is countersuing Apple, claiming that the tech giant forced employees to sign restrictive agreements to prevent them from working elsewhere and stifled the start-ups that hired them, according to Bloomberg.
Rivos and six former Apple employees filed a counterclaim in federal court in San Jose on Friday, asking the court to rule that the non-disclosure and non-solicitation agreements Apple requested were "too broad" and did not have legal enforcement effect.
CTOnews.com previously reported that Apple filed a lawsuit in August, arguing that there was ample evidence that former employees stole trade secrets for Rivos, which Rivos used to design and customize its system-on-chip (SoC) processors.
Apple began suing Rivos last year, alleging that the company hired former Apple employees and stole Apple proprietary information during the hiring process.
Apple says the start-up wants to design chips that can compete with it, but it believes Rivos is using Apple's patent information to design chips.
In the lawsuit, Apple also accused former employees poached by Rivos of stealing "thousands of megabytes of sensitive SoC specifications and design documents".
Some people use multiple USB storage drives to transfer materials to personal devices, use Apple proprietary specifications stored in collaboration applications, and use AirDrop to transfer files to personal devices.
Related readings:
Apple accuses former engineers of stealing chip secrets through AirDrop and Time Machine.
"Apple defends rights by US court: accusing former employees and Rivos of stealing chip secrets"
