A chip engineer who left Apple to start a new company lost ground in court after a judge allowed the tech giant to move forward with a breach-of-contract suit against him.

Gerard Williams III asked Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Mark Pierce to dismiss the suit, saying California law allows people to plan new business ventures while employed elsewhere. But Pierce denied the request, telling Williams the law doesn’t allow people to “create a competitive enterprise … on their employer’s time and with the employer’s resources.”

January 18, 1983: Computer manufacturer Franklin Electronic Publishers takes the wraps off its Franklin Ace 1200 computer, an unauthorized Apple II clone that triggers an important legal battle.

Cupertino will soon target Franklin’s line of unlicensed Apple clones with a lawsuit. In the resulting trial, a U.S. court will decide whether a company can protect its operating system by copyright.

Apple finally moved on from its disastrous MacBook butterfly keyboard, but the class-action lawsuit related to them is moving forward.

A U.S. federal judge rejected Apple’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit today. That sets up the company for a big legal showdown with customers trying to prove Apple knew about serious problems with the keyboard — but kept selling it anyway.

September 24, 2009: Apple lawyers head to court to defend the company against rapper Eminem’s music publisher, Eight Mile Style.

The lawsuit alleges that Apple unlawfully sold 93 of Eminem’s songs on the iTunes Music Store. This is the second time Apple finds itself on the opposite side of a courtroom from the Detroit rapper. (A previous lawsuit involved improper use of Eminem’s hit single “Lose Yourself” in an iTunes ad.)

Apple is suing Corellium, a company founded by former iPhone jailbreakers whose product lets users run iOS firmware in a web browser.

“There is no basis for Corellium to be selling a product that allows the creation of avowedly perfect replicas of Apple’s devices to anyone willing to pay,” Apple’s lawyers argue in the suit.

August 14, 1991: As Apple and Microsoft head to court to battle each other, the tide begins to turn against Cupertino and its claims that Windows unlawfully copies the look and feel of Mac OS.

The case concerns whether key elements of Apple’s operating system are original enough for copyright protection. The decision turns out to be a major blow against Apple — and the start of the company’s 1990s decline.

July 16, 2014: Apple agrees to pay $450 million to resolve the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against the company over e-book pricing in the iBooks Store.

Cupertino stood accused of conspiring with five major book publishers to fix e-book prices. The five publishers all settled their claims outside of court, leaving only Apple to go to trial.

June 13, 2013: Eddy Cue takes the stand to defend Apple’s business strategy in an antitrust case against Cupertino regarding e-book pricing.

Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, is the Apple exec in charge of the iBooks Store initiative. His testimony proves vital to a case brought by the Department of Justice, in which potential damages climb well into the nine figures.

March 30, 2006: A court case begins that once again pits Apple Computer against Apple Corps, aka The Beatles’ record label and holding company.

The lawsuit caps a long-running legal battle between the two wealthy companies. It’s the final fight in an epic legal battle over music, technology and money.

Just hours after an International Trade Commission judge ruled in favor of Qualcomm in a patent infringement lawsuit with Apple, the Commission as a whole made the iPhone maker the winner in a separate dispute between the pair of companies.

This is a demonstration of how much acrimony there is between these two, who were once close allies.