Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bud | Hacker News Reader

"Took some talent with him when he left" is a clear violation of his contract.

So that's not a "just". That's something he deserves to be sued and heavily penalized for.

The lawsuit claims that non-solicits are unenforceable in California. See page 7 (PDF page 16) of https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/12/09/applevwilliamscounter.pdf

Actually, if you read carefully, it claims that non-solicitation agreements are unenforceable if the solicitation took place AFTER the termination of employment. But in this case Apple is saying it took place before, as well.

My reading of page 5 ("APPLE CANNOT STATE A CLAIM FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT BECAUSE THE UNDERLYING CONTRACTUAL PROVISION IS ILLEGAL") is that they're claiming that the entire non-solicitation agreement is unenforceable because the contract claims to prevent solicitation after the employee leaves, and so even though a contract that only prevented solicitation during employment would be permissible, this particular contract doesn't do that and therefore the whole thing is void and there's no valid non-solicitation agreement left. "Section 3.0, however, cannot form the basis of a claim for relief, as it is illegal and thus void and unenforceable."

Am I reading that right?

I think its just the part that is not justiciable (ie enforceable) that is void.

Yes, that's the position being taken. The invalid non-solicit argument seems to be the next domino to fall in CA employment law, as it looks like at least 3 cases in 2019 have found them unenforceable. This is the strongest language I've seen in an objection to one though, so it will be interesting to see if it's ruled on.

If Bill Shockley sued Robert Noyce for taking the traitorous 8 with him to found Fairchild Semi, none of us would be here commenting on a YC powered forum about a computer company started in a Garage in Santa Clara suing people for doing the same thing.

> That's something he deserves to be sued and heavily penalized for.

Sued for making job offers to your ex colleagues ? Even in the US that wouldn't fly.

No, sued for actively recruiting them while still employed by the same company. He had a contractual duty of obligation to work in the company's best interest and instead spent dozens and dozens of hours on the phone with his co-founders and recruiting coworkers to leave with him.

I have no idea who is right or wrong legally here. That said, the complaint is clearly that he made job offers to current colleagues. Maybe that's untrue, I don't know. But it's much different than having already left the company imho.

Depends on the state. I think that flies in Texas of you've signed a non-solicit for instance.

This is a standard employment contract term. I don't agree with it, but in most of the US, if you signed a non-solicit, you cannot legally make a job offer to an ex-colleague. Even in CA, the state that most heavily policies anti-competitive behavior like this, they have not been entirely voided (although it looks like the law is headed that direction).

Restricting the movement of labour does not in any way benefit the individual. Presumably, as a member of this profession you must realise that competition improves compensation.

You are not owned by your employers. Anything else is like a turkey voting for christmas

Perhaps instead of companies using the legal arm of the government to punish employees for seeking new jobs, we should make all non-solicits illegal and force companies to compete if they want employees to stay so badly.

You can be sued if engineers decide to quit and come work for you?

That is your framing of the situation. Apple's framing is that he was plotting this while still working at Apple, and figuring out how to steal technology and take other engineers with him to start his own gig. His contract apparently says that he couldn't do that.

So yes. You can be sued for that. Obviously. Which is why he's getting sued.

You can be sued for anything, of course. A contract has to be enforceable for it to make sense to be sued for it, and California law has a lot of worker protections that make certain common contract provisions unenforceable/illegal. Nuvia's framing is that all of the things he did were previously held in court to be permissible under California law.

IANAL but my reading of the situation would be that apple has a better claim on his IP than the tactic they're taking. All they'd have to do is prove that the idea was formulated at apple and they never signed it over to him. My understanding of Cali law (albeit likely very flawed) is that this suit as written is not supported by law.

Even if the idea that is formulated is for a business that the employer isn't in, and left a decade ago (servers for data centers)? Or if the main idea is "I want to do my next chip design for someone else"? Doubtful.

Doesn't matter IIRC, most employers requires their employees to sign an agreement saying that anything they come up with during the term of their employment is owned by the employer unless the employer gives up rights explicitly. This is to prevent someone from getting "The next big thing" then running away to start a company for it even though their employer was interested.

You can be sued for anything.

Yes.

Whether or not the litigant prevails depends on specific language of agreements, their enforcability, and the specific circumstances around the departures.

Did the engineer decide to quit on their own or were they persuaded by someone who otherwise agreed not to poach?

Agreements not to poach are illegal. In fact, Apple itself was hit by a suit by the US Department of Justice over that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

The suit you are referencing was an agreement between major tech companies not to poach/recruit from each other.

The issue discussed here is an employee agreement that prohibits former employees from poaching current employees.

And this is more egregious (in Apple's perception, anyway): current employees poaching current employees.

The text that Apple signed prohibited them from: "attempting to enter into, entering into, maintaining or enforcing any agreement with any other person to in any way refrain from, requesting that any person in any way refrain from, or pressuring any person in any way to refrain from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees of the other person".

I don't see how it doesn't fit this case.

Apple doesn't own people. If employees want to change employer, they are free to do so. Apple of course knows this, so it tries to terrorize current and future employees into submission.

"Terrorize"? I mean, they signed the agreements. I'm kinda failing to see the terror, here.

Have you read one of these agreements? They're vague and defer all the important details to litigation.

Binding arbitration unless you opt out.

The situation is that many, many employers make signing one of these a de facto requirement for employments, and they are widely known / believed to be unenforceable, but you still default to being on the hook for your own legal defense if a company that has otherwise idle full-time lawyers on their payroll and someone high enough decides they don't like that you and a bunch of other people quit. They weather that fight better then you and your startup will.

I worked at an SaaS offering for market research surveys that was threatened with a lawsuit because we hired a software engineer who used to work phones in a call center that specialized in polling people. He signed the non-compete contract, obviously, but the point was to discourage him and other people from quitting, or their potential employers from hiring them.

Yes, terrorize.

The idea is to make illegal lawsuits against people who broke no laws, so as to set an example for other people who are thinking about quiting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com