Apple is suing stealth startup Rivos for poaching engineers with access to the company’s classified information. According to the complaint, Apple believes the former employees stole confidential information at the request of Rivos as part of the hiring process.
Although little is known about Rivos yet, the startup primarily targets silicon engineers in job listings. Apple says the startup wants to develop chips that will compete with their own, but the company believes Rivos is doing so with Apple’s proprietary information.
“Starting in June 2021, Rivos launched a coordinated campaign targeting Apple employees with access to Apple’s private and trade secrets about Apple’s SoC designs,” Apple’s complaint reads.
Prior to the lawsuit, Apple sent Reevos a letter explaining the confidentiality agreements that its former employees were bound by, but the startup received no response.
Apple is also accusing retiring employees poached by Reevos of stealing “gigabytes of confidential SoC specs and design files” in the lawsuit. The application explains:
Some used multiple USB drives to download content to personal devices, accessed Apple’s most proprietary specifications stored in collaboration apps, and used AirDrop to transfer files to personal devices. Others saved voluminous presentations about existing and unreleased Apple SoCs marked “Apple Proprietary” and “Confidential” to their personal cloud drives. One even made a full backup of his entire Apple device to Time Machine on a personal external drive.
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In the lawsuit against Rivos, Apple names two former engineers who previously worked on its chip manufacturing team who joined Rivos last fall. Apple’s lawsuit seeks to “recover its trade secrets, protect them from further disclosure, and disclose the full extent of their use to try and mitigate the damage that has already been and will be done.”
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