IBM Afraid Apple Will Beef Up iPods with Its Tech

Because of an injunction preventing Mark Papermaster from starting work at Apple, IBM will negotiate a bond with the "blade server guru" that will allow monetary compensation to be sought by either party, if the injunction is found to be unjust, according to InternetNews.

The report notes that, if the court finds IBM's move of preventing Papermaster to start his new job wrong, the International Business Machines Corporation will have to pay for any damage caused.

Apple recently announced that Mark Papermaster, former IBM executive, joined the company as Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering. The move attracted the attention of IBM, with whom Papermaster had signed an agreement according to which he would not start working for a competitor within the next whole year.

Papermaster defends his action by claiming, as simple as it sounds, that Apple and IBM are not competitors. Since Apple produces consumer goods, while IBM sells enterprise products, Papermaster says that "nothing about this new role will implicate any trade secrets of IBM." He also notes that Apple's offer to hire him was a "once in a lifetime" opportunity.

IBM, for its part, said that even Papermaster acknowledged that both companies manufactured the same kinds of goods, namely servers. "Because IBM has shown that the Noncompetition Agreement is reasonable in duration and geographical scope, the admitted existence of competition - and Mr. Papermaster's contractual admission that a violation of his agreement would cause IBM irreparable injury should be the end of the matter," the injunction documents read. IBM added that its embedded microprocessor technology could well be used in consumer electronics as well, such as Apple's iPods and iPhone. Macs and Apple servers were also mentioned as possible candidates that could benefit from IBM's technologies.

Papermaster had until November 11 to object to IBM's bond proposal. It is worth noting that Papermaster would have been paid a year's salary, should he have respected his “contractual obligation to refrain from working for an IBM competitor for one year," court documents indicate.