According to a new lawsuit filed against Apple, the firrm has been poaching employees from a vehicle-oriented “advanced energy” technology company called A123 Systems over the past eight months for a new, unannounced battery division at the iPhone maker. The latter company says that Apple and its former employees may have violated anti-compete agreements, and have left A123 without qualified leaders for key projects.
The complaint, filed in a Massachusetts district court (first spotted by Law360) says that Apple stole five key employees from the A123’s System Venture Technologies Division, which is essentially the company’s “moonshot” lab that worked on advanced and “game-changing” technologies. Four of the five were workers in the advanced energy storage division which primarily focused on battery technology; the fifth was the company’s Chief Technical Officer, Mujeeb Ijaz, who oversaw the work of the other four.
Apple is accused of conducting “an aggressive campaign to poach employees of A123 and to otherwise raid A123’s business,” and violation of A123’s non-disclosure, non-competition and non-solicitation agreements. These charges are leveled not at Apple generally as much as at Ijaz (who is now an Apple employee), who allegedly breached the agreements by recruiting the other four workers to join Apple.
A123 says the five were so vital to certain areas of the company’s technology that it has had to shut down key projects due to an inability to replace the lost personnel. Three of the workers allegedly recruited by Ijaz were PhD project heads, according to the complaint. A123 claims it found emails on work computers between the named engineers and Apple recruiters, charging the iPhone maker with “unfair competition.”
In addition to damages and legal fees, A123 is requesting that the court prevent Ijaz and the others from working for Apple or any other similar company for at least a year, and bar Apple from hiring any other employees from A123. Although recent stories have circulated about Apple’s alleged interest in car technology and a possible electric vehicle in development, at present Apple would not be considered a direct competitor to A123, since its battery technology development to this point has been focused on power for mobile devices, ranging from notebooks to smartphones and tablets.
In addition to poaching its own employees, A123 says that Apple has been aggressively recruiting employees from other companies that have knowledge of A123’s technology, including a collaborating battery firm known as SiNode Systems (which focuses on lithium-ion battery tech) and clients such as LG, Panasonic, Johnson Controls, Samsung, and Toshiba. Apple has also been known to be recruiting employees from electric car maker Tesla, but Tesla has also been actively poaching employees from Apple
