Apple Hit With Lawsuit Over Alleged Employee Poaching

When it comes to hiring employees, naturally every company would want to hire the best employee for the job possible, but sometimes those employees work for another company, in which case the hiring company would have to make them a better offer to jump ship, which presumably is what Apple did when they managed to convince five employees from A123 Systems to come work for them.

However it seems that A123 Systems is not happy with Apple poaching their employees and has recently filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the hiring of these employees violated an agreement that they had in place that would prevent their employees from joining competing companies. The employees in question were hired by Apple to work at a new battery division within the company.

Given that A123 Systems works on batteries and energy solutions as well, it does obviously seem that Apple would be considered to be a competing company in this case. The company goes on to claim that ever since these five employees left, they have not been able to find leaders qualified to take over their posts, ultimately leaving the projects they were working on dead in the water.

Further investigation found that there were emails sent between the staff members and Apple’s recruiters, thus leading them to believe that their employees were poached. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard Apple attempt to steal away employees from companies. Recently we had heard that Apple tried to tempt Tesla’s employees into joining the Cupertino company where presumably they might have a hand in developing the company’s rumored electric car.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple
Tags: Legal