Microsoft Takes Google To Court Over Ex-employee

[Mobo]

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Microsoft Corp. asked a county judge on Friday to stop its newest rival Google
Inc. from hiring a senior executive familiar with the world's largest software
maker's plans in China.</p>


Microsoft, which already won a temporary restraining order last month to stop
former vice president Kai-Fu Lee from starting his job at Google, stepped up its
efforts to block Lee from working at Google by asking King County Superior Court
Judge Steven Gonzalez for a preliminary injunction against hiring Lee.</p>


Microsoft argued in its motion that Lee, the former head of its Beijing
research and development center, is violating a non-compete contract that he
signed with Microsoft because he has intimate knowledge of Microsoft's
operations in China, its competitive strategy against Google and recruiting
efforts.</p>


"Allowing Dr. Lee to 'turn on a dime' and use this highly confidential
information to do directly competing work for Google would undermine the most
basic purpose of Dr. Lee's non-compete and non-disclosure promises to
Microsoft," Microsoft argued in the court documents.</p>


Google disagreed, saying that Microsoft was "behaving as if they own Kai-Fu."</p>


"Kai-Fu wanted to work at Google, he told us that and we hired him. There's
nothing illegal about that, that's fair game," Google's associate general
counsel Nicole Wong, said in an e-mailed statement, "He's not going to work on
anything at Google that is competitive with what he did at Microsoft."</p>


Microsoft and Google are locked in competition over search and other
Web-based technologies, as well as for top software talent.</p>


Google plans to open a new facility in China later this year to develop new
technologies and attract computer science researchers. A final location has not
yet been chosen.</p>


Lee, a former Carnegie Mellon University researcher who previously worked for
Apple Computer Inc., most recently oversaw groups at Microsoft developing speech
recognition and other interactive technologies for computers.</p>


Google, based in Mountain View, California, counter-sued in its home state
last month to block Microsoft's lawsuit and was set to contest the temporary
restraining order next week in Washington state.</p>


The trial is scheduled for January 9, 2006, but Microsoft said that it is
trying to fast-track legal proceedings because its non-compete contract with Lee
is only effective for one year after his last day at Microsoft, which was July
18."</p>