[whatever1]

Here [1] is the CEO of Masimo (a public company, making medical devices for decades)

It seems that Apple deceived Masimo that they are interested in collaborating, and then proceeded to poach Masimo's technical people to basically steal their technology.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1o8EoW-Eg

[fnfjfk]

Don’t use the term “poaching” to refer to workers deciding to work somewhere else. Workers aren’t owned by their employers, like the king’s deer.

https://medium.com/42hire-don-t-panic-just-hire/stop-calling...

[anonporridge]

It still seems like a useful metaphor when talking about the interactions of higher level entities like corporations.

[fnfjfk]

If the company whose workers were hired away didn’t want that to happen, they should have paid them more or offered better benefits.

When this happens, it’s because workers are winning. Not just those with a new better-paying job, but everyone in the sector that benefits from rising wages.

[hnlmorg]

In theory that’s fair, but in practice it is just another example of large companies with deep pockets bullying smaller businesses.

Taking the interview at face value, those employees were already in the 98 percentile and Apple still doubled their wages.

[fnfjfk]

You are implying that a company has any ownership whatsoever over its workforce. It does not. The workers are not “theirs”, and they are presumably employed under an “at-will” agreement.

Companies and owners sure do get upset when it’s the workers that take advantage of “at-will”.

[hnlmorg]

> You are implying that a company has any ownership whatsoever over its workforce

No I’m not. I’ve never once commented on “ownership”

I just said Apple have deeper pockets so it’s not exactly a fair fight in response to your comment that Masimo should have offered to pay them more.

> If the company whose workers were hired away didn’t want that to happen, they should have paid them more or offered better benefits.

It’s just like when legal threats are made against smaller companies or individuals. Sure, those smaller entities could in theory fight their case. But in practice they usually cannot afford to go head to head with Apple and co, so instead cave to whatever the big corp demands are.

[FireBeyond]

To me the poaching aspect isn't about the workers rights, which are as you said.

It's about the company, Apple, being where it is not supposed to be, for its own gains.

If Apple had said "Can we come to your offices and have a bunch of meetings with your employees to see which we might be interested in hiring?" do you think that Masimo would have indulged that?

Now Apple came and said "We're really interested in a partnership and agreement and licensing with you and want to understand the tech of this space better". And then said "Actually, thanks for sharing all this, but we never really intended to do anything other than mild corporate espionage, and this was just the cover story."

[goodluckchuck]

The King owns the land, not the deer. The deer are free to leave… and if they enter onto someone else’s land they may be hunted by someone else. But this assumes they do leave.

It’s one thing to message someone on LinkedIn. It’s something else to enter into a competitors place of business and make the same offers.

[lostlogin]

> It’s one thing to message someone on LinkedIn. It’s something else to enter into a competitors place of business and make the same offers.

While pretty aggressive, is it actually wrong to walk up to a worker and offer them a job?

[hnlmorg]

Apple seem to think so because Steve Jobs specifically emailed Google to ask them to stop and a recruiter got fired for it.

[gruez]

And what if the king lures the deer to his lands by making it more attractive?

[throws7337]

> And what if the king lures the deer to his lands by making it more attractive?

What if the deer did away with kings and made the lands their own?

[aurareturn]

Is poaching talent illegal? I thought tech employees have successfully sued big tech companies for anti-poaching policies many years ago?

Could they have spoken to Masimo, determined that their asking price for the technology is unreasonable, the patents are not very defensible, Apple could develop it internally for much cheaper, and finally decide to also pay Masimo's employees more to increase development speed?

[whatever1]

Poaching to re-implement patented technology, is.

[dagmx]

That would be IP theft and is completely unrelated to the patent system, and that hasn’t been proven in this case fwiw.

While some patents were found to have been infringed, that is different than IP theft even if the same people are involved.

It’s a poor extrapolation or idea anyway. Patents are public, and no sane entity would hire someone to reimplement a patent without a license.

More likely, they thought they were far enough from the patents in their new implementation and either did not know of the specific patents (were the same employees named on those patents?) or had a different reading of the invention described.

[whatever1]

To establish IP theft wouldn't one have to establish the existence of physical evidence (aka Hard Discs, emails, or any other data/documents transfers)?

Brain transfers do not suffice to make the case.

[dagmx]

No, you can also discover similarity in implementation to a degree that is much more scrutinized than patent infringement.

Hiring employees away to work on the same field of technology isn’t illegal by any means (and is explicitly not allowed to be illegal in California’s non compete rules).

Your comment said they hired them to replicate patented technology being illegal. It is not illegal, unless IP theft is involved.

But there’s been no evidence or even accusations towards that by the parties involved. That’s why the case has been purely in patent law and not corporate theft.

That they were found to have infringed the patents doesn’t have enough information to extrapolate legality of the hiring or work they did. Otherwise every other area of patent dispute like modems and design patents would be full of IP theft rulings too as folks move around.