July 19, 2005 11:55 AM PDT
Microsoft sues over Google hire
Last modified: July 19, 2005 12:57 PM PDT
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The suit was filed in a Washington state court against Google and Kai-Fu Lee, who until Monday was the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Services Division.
Google said earlier Tuesday that Lee was joining the company and would head up a new research effort in China.
"Accepting such a position with a direct Microsoft competitor like Google violates the narrow non-competition promise Lee made when he was hired as an executive," Microsoft said in its lawsuit, which was seen by CNET News.com. "Google is fully aware of Lee's promises to Microsoft, but has chosen to ignore them, and has encouraged Lee to violate them."
In the suit, Microsoft seeks monetary damages as well as an injunction upholding the noncompete clause and other provisions of Lee's contract, including terms barring him from sharing Microsoft trade secrets.
Google has emerged as a top rival for Microsoft, and several notable employees have left the software giant for Google in recent months. The company is seen as an aggressive rival to Microsoft in areas such as desktop search and e-mail. In addition, its services work well with any operating system.
Google issued a press release on Lee's hiring and announced plans to open a China research and development center this quarter.
"Under the leadership of Dr. Lee, with his proven track record of innovation and his passion for technology and research, the Google China R&D center will enable us to develop more innovative products and technologies for millions of users in China and around the world," Alan Eustace, Google engineering vice president, said in a statement.
Lee, an expert in speech recognition technology, founded Microsoft's China research lab in the late 1990s and worked at Silicon Graphics Inc. and Apple Computer before joining Microsoft.
A Google representative was not immediately available to comment on Microsoft's legal actions.
Google's public touting that it had hired Lee is in and of itself unique. The company rarely announces new hires, with CEO Eric Schmidt's hiring being a notable exception.
Though workers leave tech companies for rivals all the time, it's not uncommon for a dispute to end up in court, particularly when an executive has a contract with a noncompete clause. Microsoft has turned to legal channels before to pursue former employees who it felt were unfairly competing against the company.
Notably, the company sued when former executive Tod Nielsen and a number of ex-Microsoft employees went to work for Crossgain, a start-up that was focused on allowing business applications to run over the Web.
Crossgain eventually disassociated itself from a number of Microsoft workers that were still bound to noncompete agreements. Among the other ex-Microsofties who were forced to step down, at least temporarily, were Nielsen and Adam Bosworth, a founder of Crossgain.
Crossgain was swallowed up by BEA Systems in 2001, with both Nielsen and Bosworth joining the software maker. The two left BEA last year, and Bosworth joined Google.
A Microsoft lawyer said in an interview that Lee's move to join Google was a "particularly egregious" violation of the noncompete agreement that he had signed when he joined Microsoft.
"He has access to sensitive information, to trade secrets about our search technology and business plans and our China business strategies," Deputy General Counsel Tom Burt told CNET News.com. "He has accepted a position in direct competition with Microsoft in those areas."
Lee had been working most recently at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters, focusing on new search technologies. According to the lawsuit, for a time Lee had been the person "responsible for overall development of the MSN Internet search application." He also served as a member of a company advisory board that focused on China-related strategies, a post that, according to the suit, gave him access to the company's business strategy and planned expansion targets.
In the suit, Microsoft said that on July 5, Lee informed his department head, Eric Rudder, that he did not plan to return to Microsoft from a sabbatical and that he had talked with Google about heading up that company's China efforts.
Burt said that Microsoft was formally notified of Lee's plans Monday and that the company served him with legal papers later that day.
"There was no effort by Dr. Lee or Google to try and work out any kind of agreement," Burt said. "The combination of those factors meant that we really had no choice but to file this suit to protect our confidential information."
CNET News.com's Stefanie Olsen contributed to this report.
See more CNET content tagged:
Kai-Fu Lee,
Crossgain,
Google Inc.,
China,
BEA Systems Inc.
gloves and have come to the ring for a public
fight, instead of fighting behind the scenes.
It would be interesting to watch how this
one turns out. Microsoft has had law suits with
almost every major company in Silicon Valley so far. Has lost some big ones too.
I wish good luck to Google. Though I am sure
Google guys are more interested in intellectual
wars waged behind computer screens than the dirty ones on court.
competitors as a way of gaining an unfair advantage. I think it's a
hoot that Google has use Microsoft's own tactics on them. Turn
about is fair play, hope Google cleans their clock. Microsoft has
worked hard to gain the reputation they enjoy, they deserve a good
screwing.
I have to think that a company saavy as Google would certainly have their Legal Dept. thoroughly review the NDA before offering him the position.
If indeed NDA/NCA issue went over their heads, then shame on them for missing such a key factor for hiring an executive. Especially in this industry during these times.
I like Google and I hope this is an honest mistake or a legal move on their part. I wouldn't want to see them turn to the Dark Side one day.
GOOGLE is a search engine & a defacto one on other Internet Browsers for a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time, waaaaaaay before Redmond decided to join the party.
Typical C/NOT biased towards Citizen Gates who line their pockets with ad revenue rather than reporting technilogical facts.
MS=BS
C/NOT=TechEnquirer.
They stole the Windows idea from Xerox
They stole the spreadsheet idea from Lotus 123
They stole the word processing idea from Word Perfect
They stole the browser idea from netscape
They play every dirty trick in the book
I hope MS gets their butt kicked
Saying that he "just wants Microsoft to leave us alone," Borland
International (BORL) CEO Delbert Yocam today filed a lawsuit
against Microsoft (MSFT), claiming that the software giant is
hiring away Borland's key employees to put it out of business.
Borland claims that in the past 30 months, Microsoft has hired
34 of the ailing software developer's key employees by offering
"large signing bonuses of several millions of dollars and other
incentives," according to the suit. "It's like we're in the desert,
and Microsoft is stealing our water bottle," said the executive,
clearly frustrated by Microsoft's recruiting operations.
The suit claims that many of those former employees now hold
strategic positions at Microsoft that mirror their former roles at
Borland. Yocam said Microsoft is targeting key employees who
can use their knowledge to improve Microsoft's products.
A prime example is Paul Gross, formerly Borland's vice president
of research and development, now vice president of Microsoft's
Developer Tools Division. To date, Gross is the highest-ranking
Borland defector.
Yocam maintains that Microsoft is luring personnel away with
huge signing bonuses, some in excess of $1 million. "They have
the audacity to send limos to Borland's headquarters to take
Borland employees out to lunch. I mean, this has got to stop."
. . .
I see that Microsoft has learned their paving techniques from the various departments of transportations. First their programs have names, then they switch to numbers. Now its numbers and names, to add more confusion.
Lets take Illinois for example, we have streets, highways, and interstates. But in an effort to make our naming conventions less cumbersome, they insist on connecting these three thrufares with what we call routes. At any given point in the chicago suburbs I can be on route 58, and at the same time have traveled across 1/2 a dozen different street names.
I suppose things could be worse, I could be in atlanta trying to find the intersection of peachtree and peachtree.
How does this relate to Microsoft you ask? Simple, they should pick a naming convention and stick with it.
trust them any further than you can throw a tablet pc, if that,
and it seems they might have even stolen that idea once too.
For Brad Smith and other softie lawyers, its fair time they were
on the losing end of the stick, Google using a loophole of CA
contract law to invalidate the MSFT agreement seems to be a
case of what comes around, goes around. I hope Goolge gets
some good ideas out of Lee if he has any. From the looks of the
Windows interface they say he worked on, there may not be
much to worry about. Lets hope Google wins, then we all win.
- The Google
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by ip_fresh
January 2, 2006 12:20 PM PST
- The man is in China, you dumbass.
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See all 36 Comments >>David
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