The irony here is amazing. Woz built the Apple I while being employed by HP and now Apple making sure that doesn't happen again.
https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2013/01/w...
I think in today's world, he would definitely be sued.
This is in fact one of the ways that an employee can retain rights to an IP or product that is otherwise within the scope of the company's active businesses.
I don't see how anyone can fault Apple here when the person doing this was leading their entire chip division.
Scenario: I own car washes and hire someone to run and manage one of my locations. I pay them well and put them at the helm of the entire location. This person is able to completely learn the ins and outs of my business and in the meantime is slowly working on poaching other members of my staff and getting things lined up to open a competitive car wash.
Who's side are you on?
I'm on the side of allowing all employees, including executives and rank and file employees, to quit and work for a competitor without being sued. This is how a competitive labor market is supposed to work.
"Quit" is the operative work here. The employee in question was building the competitor using Apple resources. He didn't quit and work for a competitor. He worked for a competitor and then quit.
I wish it was that easy, it will work for small companies Until you run into economy of scale where your previous company has advantage over your own.
Why does position even matter? Ultimately in this industry it's talent and skill that prevail. Woz was at least as capable, if not more, than anyone else working in a technical capacity at HP at the time. He arguably had better business sense than anyone at the company too because they had the opportunity to start the personal computer revolution but passed on it.
"a duty of loyalty to the company" - wholly made up. The company has no loyalty to you.
"breached an intellectual property agreement" - this is the meat of the case. The rest is theater, including the subject.
You have skill and talent and you are paid to do a series of tasks. You can capitalize those talents in many ways to make money, working for a company is an option.
If you don't treat your employees well enough, they might leave and might even compete with you. We have laws to enforce this relationship at almost every possible turn. It's REALLY hard to get away with sabotage or inside information without quitting. Having your own LLC is great for a number of personal finance reasons.
This is easily resolved. He was simply on break every second he spent planning and recruiting for his startup.
If someone repeatedly says “you can have this” and you say “no” and then say “no wait I want it now that it is valuable” you probably don’t have an open and shut case regardless of what a contract says.
I’m not super familiar with Woz’s story so if that’s not what happened, my point was more about the ambiguities of the law and flexibility of its application.