Former employee claims Apple suffocates the creation of new technologies

Gerard Williams III was a lead chip architect at Apple. Last year, Gerard left Apple and founded his own startup Nuvia. According to Nuvia’s website, it is trying to reimagine silicon design to create a new class of processor that delivers the performance and energy efficiency needed to power the next era of computing. Apple sued Gerard last year that he created Nuvia using Apple resources. Apple also accused him of poaching its employees and tried to stop Nuvia from hiring Apple employees.

Gerard Williams III has now filed a response in court about Apple’s claims. Gerard now claims that Apple is now trying to poach his startup’s employees. He mentioned in court filing that Apple wants to “suffocate the creation of new technologies and solutions by a new business, and to diminish the freedom of entrepreneurs to seek out more fulfilling work.”

Gerard also mentioned in his filing that Apple’s Vice President of Silicon Engineering Sribalan Santhanam warned of “consequences” if Nuvia continued hiring Apple engineers. He even accused that Apple monitored his messages with Apple employees and that its HR department used a “heavy-handed campaign” to keep Apple employees from talking to him.

Apple has not offered its comments on this lawsuit. We will update the post once we receive any response from Apple.

Source: Bloomberg