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Comment by jammygit | Hacker News Reader

So much for being open minded about ever working for Apple. This is extremely hostile to individual freedom

Doesn't seem hostile or unreasonable. He was a senior director that potentially stole IP and also committed a breach of contract by poaching employees.

I'd say if he _did_ do those things, that seems like something that would merit serious legal action.

It doesn't seem Apple is even claiming he stole IP. Apple's complaints seem to be [0]:

1. "Breach of Contract" in starting a competing business while employed there, which was apparently prohibited in his employment contract.

2. "Breach of Duty of Loyalty", again for starting a competing business while employed there.

There are no claims around theft of trade secrets or violation of copyrights or patents. This seems like an overreach by Apple, but Williams also seemed to be playing with fire by being fairly cavalier in breaching his contract with an employer known to be litigious. It will be very interesting to see where the courts land on this.

[0] https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/12/10/apple_v_gerard_williams.pd...

He also had access to employee’s personnel files, which included salaries and stock vesting dates. This gave him info on who to recruit and the best time for that employee to leave. That’s a bit different than asking a co-worker if they'd like to quit and join a startup.

That doesn’t sound illegal or especially unethical, and probably in itself isn’t even a violation of his employment contract (though solicitation probably was). If he was deliberately depressing bonuses or promotions to get people to leave, that would be different, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Ah my bad, I think I misread this paragraph:

> Apple sued Williams in August, alleging that he breached an intellectual property agreement and a duty of loyalty to the company by planning his new startup while on company time at Apple, spending hours on the phone with colleagues who eventually joined the venture.

> poaching employees

Getting his trusted friends and colleagues to work with him?

Yeah I thought that was pretty common. About 7 years ago I watched a VP walk out to do a startup and he took several key guys with him as his starting dev team, and within a year hired off one more dev and a manager. In California.

Of course, I don’t know what was in whose contracts. Maybe that’s something you negotiate for?

The article states that Apple is not pursuing theft of IP or trade secrets.

Poaching employees though... definitely hairy.

They are probably his friends / buddies, seems natural.

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