By Reed Stevenson
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Google disagreed, saying that Microsoft was "behaving as if they own
Kai-Fu."
"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."
Microsoft and Google are locked in competition over search and other
Web-based technologies, as well as for top software talent.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Microsoft argued in Friday's filing that Lee had begun working with
Google well before his last working day at Microsoft's headquarters in
Redmond, Washington.
"As a senior Microsoft executive, Dr. Lee had frequent access to
highly confidential competitive plans including plans to compete with
Google," Microsoft said in its motion.
According to Microsoft, Lee attended an internal briefing at Microsoft
on March 24 for the software giant's top executives entitled "The
Google Challenge" which Microsoft described as "highly confidential."
Microsoft also detailed in its motion the pay package that Lee
negotiated with Google, which was worth over $10 million, including a
$2.5 million signing bonus, a $250,000 yearly salary, stock options
worth more than $5 million and other perks.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.
NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.
Reed Stevenson (reuters@telecom-digest.org)