Apple lawsuit allowed to proceed

Apple’s suit alleging start-up Rivos poached its engineers to steal trade secrets used to develop its homegrown chip designs can move forward, a federal judge in California ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose said Apple had “sufficiently identified” a trade secret and alleged “sufficient harm” by Rivos and three former employees.

The judge rejected Rivos’s request to dismiss a Defend Trade Secrets act claim as well as a breach of contract claim against five former Apple employees.

The dispute revolves around “system-on-chip” technology that shrinks multiple computer elements into a small chip, which Apple says it has invested billions of dollars in to make its devices more powerful.

Davila dismissed some trade secrets claims against six employees and a breach of contract claim against one employee.

Report causes cotton price hike

Cotton prices surged to the highest in more than six months in New York after the U.S. slashed its forecast for domestic output by more than 15%, undercutting even the lowest of analysts’ estimates for the crop’s size.

Futures for December delivery jumped as much as 3.1%, the biggest intraday gain in a month, to 88.8 cents per pound.

That’s the highest price for a most-active contract since January.

The U.S. is expected to harvest the smallest cotton crop since 2015, following drought-led losses, the Department of Agriculture said Friday in its monthly report.

That’s set to tighten global supplies of the fiber at a time when imports from top consumer China are expected to rebound.

Meanwhile, prices for wheat fell in Chicago as the USDA raised its estimate for shipments from Russia.From wire reports