New Apple VP says he didn’t violate contract with IBM

Posted by Dennis Sellers Nov 7, 2008 at 10:40am

On Nov. 11 it was announced that Mark Papermaster is joining Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to CEO Steve Jobs. And IBM is suing to stop him, though the new Apple employee says he’s done nothing wrong.

Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams. He was previously a vice president at IBM. So has filed a lawsuit against Apple to to prevent Papermaster from joining Jobs and company and divulging trade secrets related to IBM’s Power chips and server products.

However, he said his move to Apple doesn’t violate a noncompete contract he signed with former employer IBM because Apple and IBM are not competitors, reports Information Week.
In a court document filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Papermaster had this to say:

“To the best of my knowledge, IBM does not design, manufacture or market consumer electronic products. Instead, IBM focuses on high-performance business systems such as information technology infrastructure, servers and information storage products, and operating systems software. Apple, on the other hand, is in the business of designing, manufacturing and marketing consumer-oriented hardware and related products … I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM.”

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