In the mostly bland world of corporate blogging, we almost did a spit take with our espresso this morning while scanning Cisco’s “The Platform.” Mark Chandler, General Counsel, authored a post in which he challenged Hewlett Packard to allow its employees to work at Cisco without being sued for violating its non-compete agreement. In the most recent incident, HP took legal action against a former employee who had moved to California to take a job at Cisco only to be met with a lawsuit filed in a Texas court.
California’s employment law is more favorable towards employee mobility, Texas is less so. The Texas judge was not impressed by the hasty injunctive order that Cisco had thrown together, and the HP employee was allowed to start his job.
In this battle over employee freedom, it was amusing to read Chandler invoke the names of HP’s founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, as folks who managed to innovate without resorting to lawyers. Chandler then lectured and scolded HP’s legal crew, reminding them that trade secrets are protected by intellectual property law, not by non-compete agreements.
Ouch.