Dong

INTRODUCTION

23 Monolithic Power sued two former Monolithic employees (Lin Sheng and Wei Dong) and their 24 new company, Meraki. The former employees allegedly took Monolithic’s confidential information 25 and used it to obtain patents, create semiconductor products, and found Meraki, which is located in 26 China and competes with Monolithic. The remaining claim against the former employees is breach 27 of their employment contracts based on the misappropriation of confidential information. The claims against Meraki are patent infringement, theft of trade secrets, tortious interference, and unfair competition.1 The parties have four discovery disputes: (1) whether Meraki must respond to interrogatories 6–9 and whether the former employees must supplement their responses to interrogatories 15 and 17; (2) whether the defendants can depose Monolithic’s CEO Michael Hsing about his hiring of Ms. Sheng and his alleged pressuring of her to disclose her former employer’s confidential and trade-secret information; (3) whether the defendants can depose Monolithic’s General Counsel Saria Tseng about the business circumstances surrounding Ms. Sheng’s departure; 8 …