The Apple versus chip engineer court battle has begun, with a judge ruling on pre-trial motions from both sides.
Apple is suing Gerard Williams III for breach of contract after he left Apple in March of last year and set up his own chip company. Williams is credited with leading the development of all the A-series processors from the A7 chip in the iPhone 5s in 2013 through to the A12X chip used in the current iPad Pro range…
Apple alleges that Williams broke his employment contract and ‘exploited’ Apple technology to design his own chips in the belief that Apple would be forced to buy his new company.
The two have so far made allegations and counter-allegations against each other, and Bloomberg reports that a judge has now ruled on some of them.
First, Williams alleged that Apple was trying to enforce an anti-compete clause which would be illegal under California law. The judge has, for now, rejected that claim.
Second, Williams said Apple had no right to monitor his text messages – seemingly sent from a company phone. The judge rejected that too.
However, Apple lost on the third matter, in which they sought so-called punitive damages, which would go beyond the actual harm done to the company in order to serve as a warning to others. The judge ruled that this would be appropriate only if it could be shown that Williams intentionally set out to harm Apple, and no evidence had been presented to support that idea.
The rulings don’t settle any of these matters, as Williams intends to contest them before the actual Apple versus chip engineer trial can begin.
