[seieste]

D.C., could you explain what part of this judgment you disagree with? Employees should have the right to switch companies and leaving a company shouldn’t bar employment in your field.

Hooked is relying on misrepresentation and vague notions of trade secretes — If there were actual concrete IP theft (or even something like customer lists or proprietary technology) wouldn’t their lawsuit have focused on that?

[dctoedt]

> D.C., could you explain what part of this judgment you disagree with? Employees should have the right to switch companies and leaving a company shouldn’t bar employment in your field.

Where'd you get the idea I disagree with it? I had to word the post to fit within the HN character limit.

[resu_nimda]

I also inferred that sentiment from the title. "Strapped" paints the startup as a struggling underdog, "poaches" paints Apple as a big bully, "NP" paints the court as indifferent to the plight of the little guy.

"Court approves Apple's hiring of startup's engineers after failed acquihire" is the most neutral phrasing I can come up with. "Startup CEO tries to sell engineers to Apple" would be a bit flippant and biased the other way, but seems to capture the most intriguing bit.

[macintux]

Reading through it, there were some trade secret complaints: an engineer who re-created his project for Apple in a very short period of time, company documents that were kept and referenced by their former employees.

(I'm in no way taking Hooked's side here, but there were a few things that I can see them being validly upset about.)