Yiren Huang worked for Huawei designing NVMe storage controllers from 2011 to 2013. He left and co-founded CNEX, a company that specializes in similar chips.
Huawei contended Huang appropriated Plaintiffs’ trade secrets and poached fourteen Huawei employees. Huawei sued, but after a six-week trial a Texas jury refused to accept Huawei’s claims. It did decide “that Huang violated his Patent Agreement by not disclosing the patents he filed on behalf of CNEX.”
However, it refused to award damages to Huawei because the “violation did not harm Plaintiffs.” The jury also did not award any damages for CNEX’s counterclaims. No money or patents changed hands.
CNEX has since raised US$23 million from Microsoft, Dell, and others.