Once again we undertake a journey to the wonderful world of Mark Papermaster. The court case between Papermaster and his former employer, IBM, continued this week, with the almost-minted veep of devices hardware engineering filing a countersuit against Big Blue (PDF link).
The key issue at stake here is whether or not IBM’s non-compete agreement is valid. Papermaster contends that Apple and IBM are not direct competitors and that the division he’d be heading would not draw upon knowledge that he’d used when at IBM, meaning that he should be free to go work in Cupertino. The counterclaims also argue that IBM’s non-compete is “unreasonably broad” and imposes an “unreasonably lengthy” period of one year in which Papermaster is not allowed to work for competitors. There’s also the geographic matter of the non-compete agreement being based in New York law, Apple being in California, and Papermaster living in Austin, Texas.
And round and round we go: it seems like this could easily go the way of “who wants to throw more money at lawyers?” If you’re interested, you can go look at all the case’s documents and then fall asleep, which is what I did.
