14 DAY TRIAL // According to the latest news on the Web, Motorola is trying to prevent Research in Motion from hiring its employees, who either have been fired or are about to be. The report says that RIM, the manufacturer of Blackberry, has started legal action against Motorola, regarding the issue of the former hiring ex-employees of the latter.
As many of you might already know, Motorola announced earlier this year that it planned to cut more than 300 jobs in its handset division, as a result of some recent problems there. The lawsuit RIM intended states that Motorola is trying to prevent the Blackberry manufacturer from hiring either its former employees or those who are about to be laid off.
The cause of the dispute is reported to be an agreement the two companies signed back in February this year, according to which, the two parties would not solicit each other's workers. However, RIM states that the agreement was called off in August and that Motorola's attempts to stop it from hiring ex-employees are now rather illegal. RIM has slammed Motorola for so-called "unfair competitive practices" and is seeking damages from the company.
Starting with 2007, Motorola's handset division has been going downhill. After losing almost $2.8 billion since then, the company has been put in the position of taking dramatic actions so as to reduce costs, and cutting jobs is just one of them. The downgrading economic situation in the world is another factor that drove Motorola to seek solutions in order to regain its ground.
On the other hand, things seem to go pretty well for RIM. The company has been in the spotlight lately courtesy of its successful product launches, like the Blackberry Bold and the touch screen Storm, both of which have had a great impact on users.
The employees are most affected by this fiasco, as they have been hired and now seem rather unable to join an alternative company.