Apple Sues Startup Rivos in Trade-Secret Case

Apple has accused Rivos, a “stealth mode” startup, in a lawsuit of poaching its engineers to steal trade secrets, a report from Bloomberg said Monday (May 2).

Rivos has hired “dozens” of Apple engineers since June 2021, in what Apple says was a targeted push. Rivos is allegedly doing this to steal secrets that could be used to develop chips like those in  Apples M1 laptop and A15 iPhone.

Several ex-employees left to join Rivos after stealing “highly sensitive” proprietary and trade secrets about the “system-on-chip” designs used by Apple, the suit alleged.

Two ex-Apple engineers who went to Rivos for similar jobs have been named as defendants in the suit, accused of breaching intellectual property agreements they signed.

This complaint is the latest by Apple targeting ex-employees who left to join startups, with a 2019 case saying a former chip exec had betrayed the company by debuting his own startup developing processors for data centers, also luring employees from Apple to that.

Neither company responded to a request for comment from PYMNTS.

PMYNTS wrote that Apple is also being sued by a Russian law firm, Chernyshov, Lukoyanov & Partners, which is saying the tech giant violated consumers’ rights by suspending payment services in the country over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

See also: Russian Firm Seeks $1.2M Against Apple for ‘Moral Damage’

The firm is seeking 90 million roubles, or $1.28 million, in damages from Apple, which last month blocked use of Apple Pay there.

Apple was just one of numerous companies which pulled out of the country because of the military action.

Apple also said it planned to block app store access to state media operations Russia Today and Sputnik from outside the country.