Microsoft Corp. sued Google Inc. on Tuesday, accusing it of poaching a top executive the search engine company had wooed away to head a new research lab in China. The lawsuit came one day after Kai-Fu Lee, 43, an expert in speech recognition and an accomplished engineer, told Microsoft officials he was leaving his position as vice president of the interactive services division to take over as head of Google’s fledgling operations in China.Tom Burt, a deputy general counsel for Microsoft, said Dr. Lee had knowledge of trade secrets pertaining to Microsoft’s search engine technology and its China business strategy. Under Dr. Lee’s employment contract with Microsoft, he is not allowed to work for a direct competitor for at least one year after leaving Microsoft or to disclose company trade secrets at any point, Mr. Burt said.
“It’s a very egregious violation of his noncompetition agreement,” Mr. Burt said of Dr. Lee’s new position with Google. The lawsuit, which also names Dr. Lee as a defendant, asks the King County Superior Court in Seattle to enjoin Google and Dr. Lee from violating the noncompete clause.For more on this visit here