AMD Prohibited Its Ex-Employees Reveal Trade Secrets

It became known that AMD has recently won quite an unusual legal battle involving a number of AMD defectors who left the company and were lured to its largest comtetitor –Nvidia.The company won a court order which banned its ex-employees from revealing trade secrets or soliciting their ex-colleagues to change sides and join Nvidia. The ex-workers were accused of borrowing sensitive company papers when they left the company and headed over the Nvidia.
AMD’s ex-employees allegedly transferred over 100,000 files pertaining to AMD’s GPU business before they departed. The company also claims that the employees made attempts to recruit their co-workers to leave AMD as well. So, US District Judge Timothy Hillman ruled that the company could win the lawsuit it launched this past January. The judge described AMD’s circumstantial evidence as compelling. This justified AMD’s request for a preliminary injunction. The judge pointed out that AMD’s ex-employees all made copies of confidential company’s information before leaving their jobs. They retained that data and immediately started working at a significant competitor. Everything shows that AMD really has a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits with regard to the company’s claims for misappropriation of trade secrets.
Despite the fact that the seditious ex-workers joined Nvidia, considered by many as AMD’s largest competitor, AMD isn’t suing Nvidia at the moment. But it might later – it depends on whether its ex-workers comply with the court order or not.

By Sam