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“The suit was filed in Superior Court of California in Santa Clara, according to the people familiar with the matter,” Guth and Worthen report. “The contents of the suit weren’t clear but a person familiar with the suit said it centered around a confidentiality provision in Mr. Hurd’s exit agreement from H-P.”
Guth and Worthen report, “‘Mark Hurd agreed to and signed agreements designed to protect H-P’s trade secrets and confidential information,’ an H-P spokeswoman said. ‘H-P intends to enforce those agreements.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: For HP’s next CEO, we hereby officially nominate Mark Papermaster.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Andrew W.” for the heads up.]
You can’t win a “preemptive” lawsuit based upon trade secrets. One example of such a lawsuit being thrown out is
http://www.tradesecretsblog.info/2009/03/iostar_lawsuit_is_shot_down.html
You can’t sue someone just because they know something they legally learned from you and then they go work for someone else or start another company.
IF you have proof they actually USED the trade secrets or other proprietary (NOT public) information in their new job, that is a completely different story. However, preemptively suing just because they *might* use your trade secrets won’t work as outlined in the article I referenced.
I’m guessing this is just a pro-forma suit by HP which was probably included in Ellison’s calculus for hiring Hurd.
Here’s the gambit:
1. HP will claim that any employment by Hurd at Oracle will amount to breach of confidentiality clause in his severance agreement by virtue of the fact that Oracle is a competitor.
2. Oracle will dispute the extent that Oracle competes with HP.
3. A judge (in court or in an arbitration hearing) will make a decision as to the extent of Hurd’s breach of contract.
4. If a breach is determined, HP will exercise any “claw-back” clause in Hurd’s compensation, or otherwise get some sort of payoff from hurd. If no breach is determined, skip to step 6.
5. Oracle will reimburse Hurd for whatever HP gets.
6. All parties go their separate ways.
@Chaz:
From the article he is not beind sued over a non-compete. While non-compete lawuits are diffecult to win (especially in California) they are quite a bit easier to win (from HP’s perspective) than a preemptive trade secrets lawusuit. Hurd is supposedly being sued over confidentiality. That kind of suit very, very rarely holds up — unless HP can prove that Hurd actually gave proprietary/trade secret information to Oracle *after* he was fired.
A better article describing that “preemtive” trade secrets lawsuit:
http://www.non-competes.com/2009/03/utah-court-grants-summary-judgment-to.html
Just FYI: Utah courts have historically been very business — not individual — focussed. If there really was any chance a preemptive trades secrets lawsuit could win it would be in Utah.
Now Hurd can get a Mac without any concerns about hurting Microsoft’s feelings.
What the hell has HP done since the days of excellent calculators and laser printers?
I was just talking to someone the other day about how amazing the HP-41CX was (is) for its time.
I don’t know who is running HP these days but it sure doesn’t seem like engineers. And it shows.
I totally agree with MacStorm.
Classic products like the Model 201 oscillator and the HP-21 calculator (both of which I still use), are sad relics of a once great company’s past.
These days, HP is all about grinding out lousy Windoze boxes, crappy Mac printer support, and firing the guy who tried to clean up the Fiorina mess because he wasn’t politically correct.
Maybe they’re worried he will help Oracle develop a rival to the HP WebOS based tablet which is coming out… when ?