- Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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Chip weather forecast: Price wars are imminent. Squally showers.
IBM exec can't go to Cupertino
MARK PAPERMASTER the man largely responsible for the PowerPC chip which was at the heart of pretty much every Apple computer for over a decade, has been told he can't jump ship from Big Blue and head off to be part of Jobs' Mob.
Papermaster has been told that he is bound by a non-competition agreement which, as part of his contract, prevents him working for any company which competes with IBM for a year after the termination of his employment.
Papermaster, who is generally considered to be a bit of a hot property when it comes to chip design, was in charge of IBM's Blade server devision and was widley tipped to head up Apple's cloud computing efforts.
IBM reckons that Papermaster, as one of the company's top 300 executives, holds the key to too much secret information to be set free without a fight. µ
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Hasn't it been commented ad nauseam last week that non-competes were deemed unenforceable in California by that state's Supreme Court?

If the NCA was iron-clad in its home jurisdiction, why would big blue then offer money to Papermaster if he'd stay home for the year? If that was already part of the agreement, was it inadvertently contingent on him accepting the money? In other words, is it not binding if he refuses the payment?

Since this is not even mentioned, this is 'me-too(-late') reporting.
Mark Papermaster Joins Apple as Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering

CUPERTINO, California—November 4, 2008—Apple® today announced that Mark Papermaster is joining the Company as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod® and iPhone™ hardware engineering teams. Papermaster has 25 years of product and technology experience, and was previously a vice president at IBM...

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/11/04papermaster.html