Apple sues chip startup Rivos alleging employee poaching, trade secret theft

Apple has filed a lawsuit against chip startup Rivos, alleging the nascent firm not only poached Apple employees, but also stole chip trade secrets.
Apple’s M1 Ultra is the world’s most powerful and capable chip for a personal computer.
Blake Brittain for Reuters:

Apple’s Friday lawsuit said Mountain View, California-based Rivos has hired over 40 of its former employees in the past year to work on competing “system-on-chip” (SoC) technology, and that at least two former Apple engineers took gigabytes of confidential information with them to Rivos.
Apple said it spent billions of dollars and more than a decade of research on its SoC designs, which have “revolutionized the personal and mobile computing worlds.”
Apple said in the lawsuit that Rivos purposely sought to hire Apple engineers with access to the tech giant’s SoC trade secrets. It named two former engineers, Bhasi Kaithamana and Ricky Wen, who allegedly took thousands of files with SoC designs and other confidential information to Rivos.
The lawsuit also said several other unnamed Rivos employees took confidential documents when they left Apple, and that the defendants tried to cover their tracks by wiping data from their Apple-issued devices.

MacDailyNews Note: The case is Apple Inc., a California Corporation v. Rivos, Inc. et al, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:22-cv-02637.
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[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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