6 posts and columns on noncompete

Will HP Now Stand for Hanky Panicky or Should It Settle With Hurd Over Oracle and Make It All Go Away?

in News on September 8, 2010 at 12:00 pm PT

Once close partners, Oracle and Hewlett-Packard are now competing head-on in the server and data-storage-systems business. That’s the real reality for HP–and not the delicious “Real Housewives of Silicon Valley” reality show the legal battle over exec Mark Hurd has turned into. And no amount of desperate public wrangling is going to change that.

Google Swaps Out China Bosses

in Media on September 4, 2009 at 3:49 am PT

Kai-Fu Lee, the head of Google’s China operations, is leaving the company this month to start his own company. Lee had a four-year run that began with a bang: Google poached him from Microsoft in 2005, which kicked off a legal battle between the two rivals.

IBM Discovers Noncompetes Really Are Unenforceable in California [UPDATED]

in News on January 27, 2009 at 11:51 am PT

IBM’s legal efforts to enforce a noncompete agreement that would have prevented 26-year company veteran Mark Papermaster from jumping ship for a high-profile job at Apple appear to have failed. In a terse statement issued this morning, Apple said Papermaster will join the company as SVP of Devices Hardware Engineering on April 24.

The Papermaster Chase, Redux

in News on November 14, 2008 at 11:26 am PT

Oh, it’s on now. Mark Papermaster, the IBM veteran poached by Apple last month to become its senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, has filed a countersuit against his former employer in a fast-metastasizing dispute over his noncompete contract.

The Papermaster Chase

in News on October 31, 2008 at 10:11 am PT

Apple’s efforts to build its own chip development brain trust out of its acquisition of PA Semi have run afoul of IBM. Mark Papermaster, a 26-year IBM veteran and vice president of its Blade Development unit–a division that designs corporate data centers, plans to take a new job with Apple in early November, and Big Blue is doing its damndest to stop him. The company has filed suit against Papermaster, claiming his noncompete agreement with IBM prohibits him from taking a job with Apple.

Carl Icahn's Yahoo Board Choices: Meyer and Biondi?

in News on August 12, 2008 at 7:25 am PT

Unless there is an 11th-hour change of heart from Time Warner, former AOL head Jon Miller will still not be Carl Icahn’s choice for the two other seats he will select–which requires Yahoo’s consent–to the board of the Internet company, set to be announced by Friday. Instead, several sources with knowledge of the situation think Icahn is likely to choose Edward Meyer (pictured here) and Frank Biondi, both of whom were on his alternative board slate when the activist investor was waging his now-defunct proxy fight against Yahoo.