After more than three years of legal proceedings, Apple has dropped its lawsuit against Gerard Williams III, a former executive whom the company had accused of poaching employees. Williams had worked for Apple for almost a decade, overseeing the development of some of its most important chips, including the A7, which was the first 64-bit processor for mobile devices.
When Williams left Apple in 2019 to co-found Nuvia, a chip design firm that was later acquired by Qualcomm in 2021, Apple sued him, alleging that he had “secretly” started Nuvia and recruited talent for his startup while he was still an Apple employee. Williams disputed Apple’s claims and accused the company of spying on his text messages.
Bloomberg reported that Apple filed a request to dismiss the suit against Williams earlier this week, although the document does not state the company’s reason for dropping the case. It does say, however, that Apple did so “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot file the same claim against Williams again, suggesting the two sides may have come to a settlement. Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.
Before the dismissal request, court documents show that Apple had sought the recusal of Judge Sunil Kulkarni. On March 28th, Kulkarni filed a brief disclosing that he had worked at Morrison and Foerster for approximately 13 years and had kept in contact “over the years” with Bryan Wilson and Ken Kuwayti, the two “MoFo” attorneys Apple hired on as counsel earlier in the month. Kulkarni held an “informal” meeting with the two sides where he said he was “leaning toward recusal” if Apple retained the counsel of either Wilson or Kuwayti. Williams and his legal team came out strongly against the idea of Kulkarni removing himself from the case, arguing that Apple had introduced a potential conflict of interest.
After the 6th of April, the court in Santa Clara held multiple hearings where neither side appeared, and Apple then filed to dismiss the case on April 26th. Qualcomm, Williams’ current employer, did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment.
