SAN JOSE, California – Apple and the chip startup Rivos have come to a settlement, two years after Apple filed a lawsuit against Rivos for alleged theft of trade secrets. The settlement, expected to be finalized by March 15, was announced in a filing released on Friday.
The legal battle began in May 2022 when Apple sued Rivos, accusing the startup of recruiting Apple engineers with access to confidential information. Apple claimed that former employees were asked by Rivos to steal proprietary information as part of the recruitment process, resulting in the theft of “gigabytes of sensitive System-on-a-Chip specifications and design files.”
In response, Rivos filed a lawsuit against Apple in September 2023, alleging that Apple used intimidation tactics to prevent its engineers from leaving the company. However, both parties have now agreed to settle the lawsuit and are working towards finalizing the agreement.
According to the filing in federal court in San Jose, California, the settlement includes a process for remediation of Apple’s confidential information through a forensic examination of Rivos’ systems. This development marks the resolution of a legal battle that has been ongoing for the past two years.
Apple’s decision to settle with Rivos comes after the tech giant withdrew a lawsuit against former executive Gerard Williams III in April 2023. Williams, who played a critical role in the development of Apple Silicon chips, left the company in 2019 to start a server chip startup Nuvia, which was later acquired by Qualcomm in 2021.