SAN FRANCISCO: Apple has sued the Santa Clara-based “stealth-mode” semiconductor startup Rivos and two former employees, Indian American Bhasi Kaithamana and Ricky Wen, for allegedly stealing trade secrets to build a chip lineup.
In a lawsuit filed in CA, the iPhone maker said that Rivos launched a “coordinated campaign” to attract Apple employees and encourage them to copy confidential documents before quitting. Apple employed Kaithamana for nearly 8 years, from September 2013 until August 2021.
“During his tenure with Apple, Kaithamana was a CPU implementation engineer, responsible for managing CPU design for Apple’s SoCs (system on chips),” the lawsuit said. Osmania and Rutgers University graduate Kaithamana was responsible for, among other things, designing and developing proprietary and trade secret physical structures for carrying out critical functions in Apple’s ARM-based SoCs.
The lawsuit alleged that before leaving Apple in August 2021, Kaithamana copied a series of spreadsheets, presentations, and text files onto an external USB drive under the name “APPLE_WORK_DOCS”. Wen also allegedly accessed files related to Apple trade secrets, including “files related to Apple’s unreleased SoC designs, and then made a copy of his company-issued computer’s hard drive just before leaving the company”.
“The sheer volume of information taken, the highly sensitive nature of that information, and the fact that these employees are now performing the same duties for a competitor with ongoing access to some of Apple’s most valuable trade secrets, leave Apple with few alternatives,” the lawsuit read.
“Since June 2021, over 40 former Apple employees have joined Rivos. Rivos continues to target Apple engineers, with more departures occurring this month. Most of these former Apple employees were design engineers, developing Apple’s cutting-edge proprietary and trade secret SoC designs,” said Apple in its lawsuit.
