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Ex-Microsoft Exec Barred From Google Job
DaHat writes "Following up on last weeks report that Microsoft filed suit against Google for the hiring of former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee, today Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez granted a temporary restraining order barring Lee from violating his noncompete agreement by performing the work that he was hired for by Google."
...are ridiculous. I don't care if they are legal, they aren't in the spirit of freedom (in the sense of living in a free country).
Non-disclosure? Sure, it makes sense.
Non-compete? No, it denies the freedom of place of work.
How can someone compete fairly knowing what they aren't legally allowed to disclose? I'm not sure, but I don't think this is the answer.
The exec can't work? No golf until the case is settled?
"Old man yells at systemd"
If everyone on Slashdot just stopped buying MS products, we could really exert pressure on them and, umm...
OK, what if we built a large wooden badger...
Interestingly, Google is (in part) trying to say in California, where they are, the law prohibits the kind of thing Microsoft is doing right now (it's a good law, by the way). But people, the contract this guy signed was not signed in California. Microsoft is based in Washington State. I tend to think Microsoft has a point here...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
These non-compete agreements are complete and utter crap. Whether or not it's in a contract, a contract can't deny a person his civil liberties. If a contract says you're now a slave, even if you sign it, it's not a legally binding agreement. A non-compete agreement robs someone of the ability to work for a living. The company is essentially telling someone that, perhaps the only marketable skill they have, they're not allowed to use to make a living. People have the fundamental right to work for a living, and telling someone they signed away that right in a contract is just crap.
You cannot legally/bindingly sell yourself into slavery, because there are some natural rights that are considered to be inviolable.
I'd suggest that cases like this begin to border on slavery. You are tied to one employer and one employer only in order to eat, and thus you are tied to his/her whims and conditions, whatever they may be, in order to survive.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Knowledge is everything in the web world, we learn a lot from our employers, I'm okay with them telling me to avoid their line of work for a period after I finish my employment. Just because your knowledge may be with regards to Searching for example, and you are banned from working from a search centric company (ie google) doesn't mean your skills are useless.
That's what patents are for.
If your ideas are really novel, patent them, otherwise, don't interfere with somebody's ability to put food on the table for their family because you're afraid of competing in a free market.
Non-competes should be flat-out illegal, or at a minimum the company should be forced to pay this guy to NOT work.
If your employees are that important to you, treat them that way.
And it's not like the guy in question is an idiot, he knew what he was doing when he signed his contract with Microsoft.
That's not a very good argument. People have gotta eat. They can't sit around for years until various things go into and out of style in the market place.
Contracts like this are predatory. And non-competes are bad for the market. Tons of new and innovative companies are started by people who picked up their experience at other places and realized they could do it better. This is a GOOD thing because it forces business to compete.
It's the whole frickin point of capitalism.
Life is too short to proofread.
In year ~2000, there was a court case in the province of Quebec where Matrox was suing an ex-employee for going to work for nVidia, while under a non-compete agreement. Matrox lost.
The court indicated that Canada is a free and capitalist society which upholds the idea of free movement and the ability to earn a living. Additionnally, the Quebec Civil Code (the province of Quebec uses codified law mixed with common law principles) clearly indicates that such an agreement must be limited in its scope, location and duration.
Matrox made two mistakes. Firstly, its agreement mentionned that it would be reviewed and signed every year, which it wasn't (this little fact wasn't pleaded by the defendant so it didn't impact the decision, but the judge noted it in his judgement). And most importantly, it specified that the employee couldn't work for a list of competitors in North America (if I recall correctly). This location being too vague made the agreement unenforceable.
Note that it wasn't fact that the two companies operate in different jurisdictions that made the agreement unenforceable, as was hinted at by internet "news" media. It's often possible to enforce a judgement from one jurisdiction in another in civic societies.
Well, considering that the current case involving Microsoft and Google presents a number of similarities, perhaps similar civil principles will determine the outcome.
And the enforcement of contracts are wierd, and jurisdication is even wierder. Everyone plays fast and loose with both, trying to get some advantage by manipulating the rules. It is why tort law reform tries to push cases to the Federal level, where the courts have more to do.
And you know there are some things that contrats can't be used for. I can't contract to kill someone, and as part of the contract hold the person who pays me money harmless. Even promising not to work for a year for $1000 is questionable. Would that hold up in court? Who knows. Even if was a million dollars, the court would want to know why, and if it was a neccesary condition, or merely a desired conditioned. It is like we can't give up rights without due cause. Otherwise we would have employer violating minimum wage and other worker protections much more than they do now.
But as The Register pointed out, this has nothing to do with an executive. This has to do with the greatest challenge to the MS monopoly since Netscape. Google is building platform indepedent tools performing tasks that MS would have us believe are impossible outside of IE. They are providing free consumer services that MS depended upon to further the desktop monopoly. Google is1 proving to the server market that MS is not neccesary, and too expensive. Few customers are paying for the latest prodcts. The only reason they sell all the OS they do is that one can't transfer an OS from an old machine.
So really this is nothing more than an attempt to sue a competitor to death. If MS can weaken google enough over the next couple years, then Vista can be used to apply the final death blow. If iTunes maintains even 70% of the online music market, and Google maintinas 70% of the search market, and Sony/Nintendo maintains 70% of the games market, and all MS can say is look at out pretty pictures, where are they in 10 years? Do they have the research and infrastructure to become a services company like IBM? Do they actully provide any service?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Did you stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, or do you just play a lawyer on television? It is obvious that you have never taken a constitutional law class, because your analysis is DEAD WRONG.
First of all, there is very little chance of a non-competition case going before the Supreme Court. Why? Because non-compete provisions have been used to varying degrees since well before this country was founded -- this is not exactly a new issue in employment law.
Second of all, there will not be a commerce clause argument. Congress has not passed laws favoring or disfavoring non-competition provisions in employment contracts, and it has not assumed exclusive regulatory control of the field of employment law. Instead, individual States have a long history of regulating employment and labor practices, including the validity or invalidity of non-compete provisions. Supremacy clause, Tenth Amendment, end of argument.
There might be a dormant commerce clause argument. The name change is trivial but the effect on the analysis is dramatic -- does a statute authorizing a non-compete provision discriminate between domestic commerce and interstate commerce? In short, no. Poorly drafted non-compete provisions may be overreaching, but they rarely discriminate between employees that live and work within a State versus those who merely work within a state. Most importantly, state statutes that authorize non-compete agreements, when they exist, are almost certainly facially neutral, applying equally to everyone working within that jurisdiction. No discrimination, no violation of the dormant commerce clause, end of argument.
Third, the argument has nothing to do with the Fourteenth Amendment. There is no "Fourteenth Amendment right to liberty" or "right to property". The Fourteenth Amendment provides a right to equal protection under the law, i.e., excluding to various degrees discrimination based upon class (race, sex, religion, alienage, etc.), and makes most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. Unfortunately, there's no due process or equal protection argument, which is probably why you didn't cite them, and then vomited up a mass of legal sounding political theory in an attempt to sound authoritative.
This is a matter of contract law. Period. Can an employer and an employee acting in a free market agree to terms beyond "I'll pay you X dollars per time period in exchange for your labor." What can be done beyond that is a matter of State policy and enforcement under the State's powers to regulate for health, safety and welfare. Most importantly, other states are required to enforce those decisions under the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution. That is the proper analysis.
If the court in California attempts to assert jurisdiction over the case (which will not happen, the case is already underway in Washington, so that the best that Google can hope to do is intervene in the Washington court), it must apply and enforce Washington law. Mr. Lee was not a resident of California when he signed the contract, he was not a resident of California when he worked at Microsoft, and he was not a resident of California when he left Microsoft. The fact that he later moved to California is irrelevant.
A helpful illustration: Let's assume that Utah permits people over the age of 14 to marry with their parents' consent. Let's assume that both families later move to New York, and that the progressive New Yorkers only permit people over the age of 18 to marry. Is the marriage between the 14 year olds void? Is it illegal? No. This is the whole issue behind the Defense of Marriage Act (in the context of homosexual marriage). Expect to see DOMA reach the supreme court, but not this Google farce.
In any case, thank you for playing the 'misinform the public behind an pseudononymous Slashdot ID' game. Your analysis is worth everything that we paid for it.
Note: IAAL, licensed and practicing in Illinois.