Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

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Hooked points to evidence showing its former employees (in particular its CTO) retained Hooked technical information, accessed it while in Apple’s employ, and gave misleading statements about how much of it they had retained. But showing that the employees had the information is not sufficient to establish Apple improperly acquired or used it...

Hooked relies on circumstantial evidence that in its view generates an inference of trade secret use sufficient to create a triable issue of fact as to that element: its former employees were assigned to tasks at Apple similar to the work they did at Hooked and within weeks one of them produced a detailed plan for a recommendations system much like Hooked’s version. Further, an expert opined that the source code for Apple’s recommendations system was similar to the source code for Hooked’s. That evidence does suggest the engineers drew on knowledge and skills they gained from Hooked to develop a product for their new employer – but California’s policy favoring free mobility for employees specifically allows that. [pp. 6-7 of the court document linked above]

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Waymo points to evidence showing its former employees (in particular its lead engineer) retained Waymo technical information, accessed it while in Uber’s employ, and gave misleading statements about how much of it they had retained. But showing that the employees had the information is not sufficient to establish Uber improperly acquired or used it...

Waymo relies on circumstantial evidence that in its view generates an inference of trade secret use sufficient to create a triable issue of fact as to that element: its former employees were assigned to tasks at Uber similar to the work they did at Waymo and within months one of them produced a detailed plan for a LIDAR system much like Waymo’s version. Further, an expert opined that the schematic for Uber’s LIDAR system was similar to the schematic for Waymo’s. That evidence does suggest the engineers drew on knowledge and skills they gained from Waymo to develop a product for their new employer – but California’s policy favoring free mobility for employees specifically allows that. [Anthony Levandowski's recurring dreams]

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> Oh hey and there’s the name right there!

I wish non-competes being unenforceable had a pithy associated phrase, but it doesn't.

There are nuances to non-competes that sometimes get glossed over, such as non-solicitation of customers and co-workers. I believe those types of clauses are enforceable in CA.

Oddly enough, the union neutering that is encoded as "right to work" is usually cited as a factor that makes a state more "business friendly", and so are enforceable non-competes.

The cognitive dissonance humans are capable of is amazing. To actually say “We would never allow that in our town.” in the pejorative while flying back from a trip specifically meant to learn how to be like another town.

If you’re not going to act on an author’s central point, don’t try to do any of the other parts (they’ll probably actually be harmful). If you’re not going to copy the central parts of something successful, don’t bother copying the other stuff.

The recipe for success of Silicon Valley is pretty straightforward. It has great colleges, great weather, and weak noncompetes. So people go there to start companies. And now it has a compounding cycle of attracting capital, founders and talent (recent events aside).

But a government employee from Boston can’t say that, cause they can’t do shit about it. It’s not like they’ll fix the weather or the noncompetes (too many entrenched medtech companies to change that now).

So they’ll say “they have accelerators!” and open a city sponsored accelerator and maybe some successful company will pop out in the next ten years.