Legal Arguments Can Hurt Tech Job Mobility

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."

Comments

Re:Competing to trade with the devil

[Creepy Crawler]

--- ...because an overwhelming percentage of cars are purchased with cash (their banking system sucks, another chink in the armor).

That's a pretty damned bad racial slur. Chink in the armor as reffering to a Chinese person in a car? Wow. And I thought I was racist ;P

J/K ;P I know it was unintentional.

Re:The new serfdom

[Sponge Bath]

Pay the man for NOT using his brain for the rest of his life.

I thought that was policy for all MS employees.