[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.