Papermaster Fights for His Role at Apple, Sues Back

26-year old IBM veteran Mark Papermaster filed a countersuit last week, days after U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Karas ordered the blade server guru to "immediately cease his employment with Apple."

As noted in previous court filings, Papermaster argued that Apple and IBM were not really rivals, a Computerworld report says. "Apple and IBM are not significant competitors," Papermaster said in the filing. "IBM primarily provides business services, while Apple's primary business is the design, manufacturing and marketing of consumer electronic products.”

Still, if there's but the smallest clue that Papermaster's knowledge of IBM trade secrets will rub off onto Apple, Papermaster will have to find another hot shot employer to attach himself to.

IBM's former executive  has also found the non-competition agreement he signed while at IBM as "unreasonably broad," because it tries to restrict him from working for "any company that engages in competition with his former business unit to any extent, even if Mr. Papermaster will not be working for the part of the company that does," the same court documents have showed.

Well, broad or not, an agreement is still an agreement. Surely, no one was holding a gun to Papermaster's head when he signed it, so it's still not very clear who's right and who's wrong here.

Furthermore, when suing Papermaster for running off to Apple, IBM claimed that he had information of "highly confidential IBM trade secrets and know-how" that would "irreparably harm" the company, if he was allowed to work for the Cupertino Mac maker. While all this is very true, Papermaster did say that, when he accepted to work for Apple's devices division, he signed a confidentiality agreement there that forbade him to bring so-called confidential information to the company. "Mr. Papermaster has honored and intends to continue to honor his agreement not to disclose any confidential IBM information," the suit stated.

Because of where Papermaster lived and where Apple was located, the filing also said that the non-competition agreement was unenforceable.