Legal Arguments Can Hurt Tech Job Mobility

Posted by Zonk on Sunday August 28, 2005 @08:42AM from the don't-go dept.

camelcai writes "Microsoft's suit against Kai-Fu Lee and Google is based off of the thought that in some circumstances people can't avoid sharing or relying on trade secrets from their former employer when moving to a competitor. In MS's filing it says: 'Lee's conduct threatens to disclose or Lee inevitably will disclose Microsoft's trade secrets to Google and/or others for his and/or Google's financial gain in the course of working to improve Google search products that compete with Microsoft, and in the course of establishing and building Google's presence in China to compete with Microsoft's efforts in China.' According to CNET, thanks to this increasingly popular legal argument, defectors might face a lawsuit even if they did not sign agreements not to compete or not to disclose confidential information."

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Heh by melted · 2005-08-28 09:00 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Except it's not Google that competes with Microsoft. It's Microsoft that is forced to compete with Google. And how much does a VP know about the actual "trade secrets". Having seen and heard plenty of MS VPs in my life (I've read somewhere there are about 150 of them), I'd say he didn't know anything useful. Just a bunch of buzzword technobabble to make his boss feel good.