Posted on 09/07/2010 1:45:35 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It took Hewlett-Packard less than a day to file a lawsuit against its former chief executive, Mark V. Hurd, over his decision to join its rival and partner Oracle as a co-president.
H.P. filed its lawsuit on Tuesday in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara, claiming that Mr. Hurd had breached his contract with the company. The lawsuit said that Mr. Hurd could use his intimate knowledge of H.P. and its trade secrets to aid Oracle and harm H.P. The two companies compete in the market for computer servers, storage systems and business software.
Mr. Hurd resigned from H.P. last month and then joined Oracle as a co-president on Monday.
“In his new positions, Hurd will be in a situation in which he cannot perform his duties for Oracle without necessarily using and disclosing H.P.’s trade secrets and confidential information to others,” H.P. said in its lawsuit.
An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment.
While they compete in various markets, H.P. and Oracle are also among the closest partners in the business computing markets, with Oracle’s database software running on H.P.’s computer servers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Kinda weird. That’s like saying Microsoft is a competitor to Dell. Hp sells so much stuff, that Hurd would probably have to be a CEO at Pepsico to avoid a suit.
What HP seems to be saying is Hurd CANNOT work for any large company that has some sort of partnership with HP.
At least that’s what I’m reading from their complaint.
Prediction: Oracle gives HP some money or access to some software goodies, and the suit goes away. Better to have this guy in the U.S. with Orcle than in Red China with Lenovo.
These three businesses overlap in multile multi-BILLION dollar markets and are basically the only players out there. Nowhere near the overlap between Microsoft and Dell.
As far as Hurd having to work for Pepsico to get a job now, sometimes you break rules that kick you out of the industry you are working in - just ask Pete Rose.
Looks like Larry Ellison is a lady’s man and does not mind his employees doing the same...
Wonder what this does to company morale...
I had forgotten that Oracle picked up Sun.
HP fired him, probably when they shouldn’t have. So, they can hardly complain when he goes to work for another company in the industry he’s been in his whole career.
That’s interesting, a few years ago HP tried to argue that non-compete agreements aren’t enforceable. Interesting how their tune changes when the roles are reversed.
Yes, Oracle gobbled up Sun, and with it my former company, StorageTek, the folks who developed tape storage and robotic libraries to a fine art. Sun bought STK to stop competition with ITS line of non-tape backup systems... and STK let go a whole BUNCH of good people (me included) in order to look profitable when looking for a suitor. They even brought in the former CEO of Xerox to do the dirty deeds and make us look as bad as Xerox had been, so we’d look “available” for a buyout. Now the whole company’s just about GONE... and leaving our former customers in a bad spot, with millions of bucks in equipment and no one to take care of it for them...
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