The entertaining saga of the world’s most famous job hopper, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, may be coming to a close.
Lawsuits have been filed and counter-filed, accusations of bad behavior made, and who knows how many stories written, all over one man’s quest to do what millions of other people dream of doing: finding a job they love.
Dr. Lee has become a millionaire rope in a billionaire tug-of-war. By all accounts, the good Doctor has the kind of credentials and accomplishments, particularly in speech recognition technology, that should make his work and not his workplace the real story. But that’s not how things work.
And soon, it may be over. Not long after Washington’s King County Superior Court ruled that Dr. Lee could work for Google only as a recruiter during his one-year noncompete term, numerous sources reported that Microsoft is now ready to end the fight.
Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith told reporters that if Google promises to abide by the court ruling, which means obeying the noncompete term through its ending in July 2006, Microsoft would end the litigation.
Google probably isn’t going to accept that generosity, since it would likely require Google to end its legal challenge of the noncompete agreement. A lawsuit filed in Google’s home state of California, where right-to-work concepts tend to take precedence over noncompete agreements, may still have a chance of negating the disputed clause.
With Google and Microsoft competing heavily for the most talented tech workers, a Google win in California could see more workers decamp from Redmond in favor of a future in Mountain View. The Lee case in California would be repeatedly cited by other Microsoft departures with noncompete clauses in their contracts.
The next hearing in California has been scheduled for October 14.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
