Motorola sues former executive who jumped to Nokia

(Crain’s) — Motorola Inc. is asking a judge to prevent one of its top cell phone executives from disclosing confidential information in his new job with rival Nokia Corp.
Motorola sued David Hartsfield, who oversaw development of top products such as the Droid smartphone. The company is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Mr. Hartsfield from joining Finland-based Nokia as a vice-president because he might disclose secrets involving Motorola’s product and pricing strategies.

Mr. Hartsfield worked for the Schaumberg telecommunications company for a decade, ultimately heading up the development of phones making use of CDMA, a network technology employed by Verizon Wireless and other carriers. He resigned Dec. 2 and took a nearly identical job at Nokia, according to the lawsuit.

In its lawsuit, filed Friday, Motorola claims there’s no way Mr. Hartsfield could take such a job and not violate his agreements to not disclose confidential information.

“Hartsfield cannot erase his knowledge of Motorola’s confidential information,” the lawsuit states. “In working on Nokia’s CDMA mobile devices, Hartsfield could not compartmentalize his knowledge to prevent himself from using Motorola’s confidential information.”

In a response filed in U.S. District Court, Mr. Hartsfield’s attorneys asked Judge Charles Norgle to dismiss the claim as an “unjustified first step in an effort to unlawfully interfere with Hartsfield’s livelihood and restrict him from carrying out his lawful employment with Nokia.”

“Motorola fails to point to one specific act of wrongdoing, and specifically the disclosure of what it alleges to be confidential or trade-secret information by Hartsfield to his current employer, and cannot specifically identify what conduct it is it wishes Hartsfield to be restrained from.”

Mr. Hartsfield also plans to challenge the legitimacy of non-compete agreements that are common in the technology industry. Motorola has aggressively sued former employees who have gone to work for Apple Inc., Research in Motion Ltd. and other rivals.