IBM wants info from Apple senior officials in Papermaster brouhaha
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Dec 2, 2008 at 6:01pm
IBM has asked for information from several unnamed senior officials at Apple as part of the discovery process in the lawsuit to block a former executive from joining Apple, according to Computerworld.
New court documents also revealed that the federal judge overseeing the case denied IBM’s request to postpone the trial while awaiting a decision from an appellate court.
U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Karas rejected IBM’s call to delay the trial of Mark Papermaster, the 26-year veteran of the company who resigned in October to take a senior position at Apple. IBM made the request after Papermaster appealed Karas’ Nov. 7 ruling that forced him to stop working at Apple.
IBM objected to the simultaneous pursuit of both the original lawsuit and the appeal, arguing that the former should be delayed until the results of the latter had been decided, notes Computerworld. On Nov. 11 it was announced that Mark Papermaster was joining Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to CEO Steve Jobs. Papermaster was tapped to lead Apple’s iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams. He was previously a vice president at IBM.
IBM filed a lawsuit to stop Papermaster from working at Apple. IBM said his hiring is an attempt to expand Apple’s presence in the markets for servers and chips for handheld devices. Big Blue is suing Papermaster to prevent him from joining Apple and divulging trade secrets related to IBM’s Power chips and server products, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Visit the Macsimum Apple Store for your Mac, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV and accessory needs.
Leave a comment ⇒
Please post the article topic & comment in our forums. No registration required.
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
