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You can be sued if engineers decide to quit and come work for you?
by clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
You can be sued if engineers decide to quit and come work for you?
- Bud 7y agoThat is your framing of the situation. Apple's framing is that he was plotting this while still working at Apple, and figuring out how to steal technology and take other engineers with him to start his own gig. His contract apparently says that he couldn't do that. So yes. You can be sued for that. Obviously. Which is why he's getting sued.
- geofft 7y agoYou can be sued for anything, of course. A contract has to be enforceable for it to make sense to be sued for it, and California law has a lot of worker protections that make certain common contract provisions unenforceable/illegal. Nuvia's framing is that all of the things he did were previously held in court to be permissible under California law.
- leeter 7y agoIANAL but my reading of the situation would be that apple has a better claim on his IP than the tactic they're taking. All they'd have to do is prove that the idea was formulated at apple and they never signed it over to him. My understanding of Cali law (albeit likely very flawed) is that this suit as written is not supported by law.
- not2b 7y agoEven if the idea that is formulated is for a business that the employer isn't in, and left a decade ago (servers for data centers)? Or if the main idea is "I want to do my next chip design for someone else"? Doubtful.
- leeter 7y agoDoesn't matter IIRC, most employers requires their employees to sign an agreement saying that anything they come up with during the term of their employment is owned by the employer unless the employer gives up rights explicitly. This is to prevent someone from getting "The next big thing" then running away to start a company for it even though their employer was interested.
- ProAm 7y agoYou can be sued for anything.
- balls187 7y agoYes. Whether or not the litigant prevails depends on specific language of agreements, their enforcability, and the specific circumstances around the departures. Did the engineer decide to quit on their own or were they persuaded by someone who otherwise agreed not to poach?
- icebraining 7y agoAgreements not to poach are illegal. In fact, Apple itself was hit by a suit by the US Department of Justice over that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- balls187 7y agoThe suit you are referencing was an agreement between major tech companies not to poach/recruit from each other. The issue discussed here is an employee agreement that prohibits former employees from poaching current employees.
- macintux 7y agoAnd this is more egregious (in Apple's perception, anyway): current employees poaching current employees.
- icebraining 7y agoThe text that Apple signed prohibited them from: "attempting to enter into, entering into, maintaining or enforcing any agreement with any other person to in any way refrain from, requesting that any person in any way refrain from, or pressuring any person in any way to refrain from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees of the other person". I don't see how it doesn't fit this case.