By Allen Tsai | Wed Sep 08, 2010 11:11 am |
Hewlett-Packard is suing its former chief executive Mark Hurd from joining rival Oracle as a senior executive, saying his hiring will lead to a transfer of trade secrets to a competitor.
The lawsuit, which comes a day after Oracle hired Hurd as co-president and director, seeks an injunction against him and asks for unspecified damages.
"In his new positions, Hurd will be in a situation in which he cannot perform his duties for Oracle without necessarily using and disclosing HP's trade secrets and confidential information to others," HP said in the complaint.
"Mark Hurd agreed to and signed agreements designed to protect HP's trade secrets and confidential information," an HP spokeswoman added. "HP intends to enforce those agreements."
While Hurd signed a two-year confidentiality pact, that contract did not include a non-compete clause.
"By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees," said Larry Ellison, Oracle's CEO. He added that the board "is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate."
The suit complicates the working relationship between the two tech giants, which have cooperated for the last 25 years to ensure that their products work together.
But that partnership began to strain when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion last year, bringing the database software company into direct competition with HP's core business of selling computers.
HP's lawsuit is the latest fallout of the bitter split between Hurd and HP, where he was CEO for five years before a sexual-harassment investigation lead to his resignation over expense account irregularities last month.
Hurd's exit package from HP was worth an estimated $34.6 million.
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