• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, September 6, 2005

In 2002, Microsoft finally settled a longstanding antitrust case brought by the federal government. Who'd have imagined that just three years later, the Redmond, Wash. behemoth would be back in court, this time arguing that a judge should prevent a former Microsoft executive from joining a rival company?

Microsoft has accused Google of poaching Kai-Fu Lee, who had signed a contract promising not to work for any Microsoft rivals for at least one year after leaving the company.

Many states look on such agreements with disfavor, because they discourage competition -- an attitude Microsoft is all too familiar with.

Google lawyers used Microsoft's past legal history to full advantage last week. The company filed a declaration made by Microsoft engineer Marc Lucovsky, in which he described Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's reaction upon learning that Lucovsky planned to join Google. Ballmer allegedly threw a chair across the room and launched into a tirade against Google and its CEO, Eric Schmidt. "I'm going to f***ing bury that guy. I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google," Ballmer allegedly said. (In a statement, Ballmer reportedly said Lucovsky's recollection was a gross exaggeration.)

Schmidt previously was CEO at Novell Inc., and chief technology officer and corporate executive officer at Sun Microsystems Inc. Both companies tangled with Microsoft. In fact, last November Microsoft paid $536 million to settle claims with Novell; earlier, Microsoft paid Sun $1.6 billion to settle patent and antitrust disputes.

While Microsoft insists that Lee has knowledge of so-called secret strategic plans for China, Google counters that all of Microsoft's plans have been revealed in numerous public forums.

The redacted filings in the case comically demonstrate this difference of opinion; in them, Microsoft expurgated all references to its blueprints -- which Google claims easily are available in the public domain.

This entire issue seems to be beside the point. Lee maintains he doesn't plan to disclose whatever trade secrets he has, either now or in the future. In any event, the non-compete agreement Lee signed with Google lasts for just one year. That means that next July, Google presumably will be free to hire Lee. Unless Microsoft plans to either complete its plans for China by next July, it will be in the same position then as now, except that it will have slowed down some Google plans by about one year.

The court should see Microsoft's lawsuit as what it is: an attempt to railroad the competition. The court shouldn't help Microsoft -- which already has a long pattern of similar behavior -- to do so once again.