Apple’s Case Against Former Indian American Employee for Allegedly Stealing its Trade Secrets
- The technology giant has named Bhasi Kaithamana in a lawsuit against technology startup Rivos Inc., for poaching its engineers, encouraging them employees to copy troves of work-related documents before leaving.
Apple has named two former employees, including an Indian American, in a lawsuit against technology startup Rivos Inc., for allegedly stealing its computer-chip trade secrets. The lawsuit, filed on May 6, in a federal court in San Jose, California, has identified two former engineers, Bhasi Kaithamana and Ricky Wen, who it says “allegedly took thousands of files with SoC designs and other confidential information to Rivos.”
According to information in the lawsuit, the Austin, Texas-based Kaithamana worked for Apple for nearly eight years as a Senior Engineering Manager (CPU Design). He worked at Apple’s facilities in Austin, Texas until Aug. 16, 2021, “in coordination with other Apple employees in Apple’s facilities in Cupertino, California, including when the facts underlying this Complaint occurred,” the lawsuit says. Kaithamana is currently working as a CPU Implementation Lead at Rivos, the lawsuit adds.
He had signed an intellectual property agreement (or IPA) “agreeing to jurisdiction in California and venue in Santa Clara County,” that banned him from disclosing proprietary information.
The lawsuit alleges that before leaving in August 2021, Kaithamana copied a series of spreadsheets, presentations, and text files onto an external USB drive under the name ‘APPLE_WORK_DOCS.’
Similarly, Wen, a resident of San Jose, California, as a CPU design engineer employed by Apple and worked at Apple’s facilities in Cupertino, California until Aug. 6, 2021. He is currently employed as a Principal Member of Technical Staff with a focus generally on Hardware Engineering at Rivos.
The lawsuit describes Rivos as “a stealth startup,” that has largely avoided public attention since it was founded in May 2021. Apple says Rivos has hired more than 40 of its engineers, many of whom were familiar with Apple’s system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs, adding that it encouraged employees to copy troves of work-related documents before leaving.
Apple said it spent billions of dollars and more than a decade of research on its SoC designs, which have “revolutionized the personal and mobile computing worlds.”
Noting that its secrets could be used to significantly accelerate” the development of competing SoCs, Apple asked the court to block Rivos from using its trade secrets, order its former employees to return its property, and award it an undisclosed amount of money damages.