RIM sues Motorola for curbing job hiring

By Jacqueline Emigh | Published December 29, 2008, 11:07 AM

In a departure from some other recent activities around tech exec job flight, RIM is suing Motorola for allegedly impeding its plans to hire current and laid off Motorola staffers.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has filed a lawsuit against fellow electronics manufacturer Motorola seeking to officially invalidate a pact between the two companies not to solicit one another's employees.

Entered in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, RIM's suit counters a Sept. 4 court filing by Motorola that attempted to block RIM from hiring present and former Motorola staff based on a nondisclosure agreement reached this past February. RIM contends that the NDA, which contained a non-solicitation clause, expired in August.

Landing a job with relatively prosperous RIM is a prospect that could look good right now to current employees of financially challenged Motorola.

Earlier this month, Motorola announced a permanent freeze in employee pension plans, along with a temporary suspension of company matching contributions to 401(k) plans.

Meanwhile, the court filings between Motorola and RIM represent a departure from some other recent legal efforts by technology firms to fight executive flight in today's tough economic climate. Earlier this year, IBM and Motorola each sued their own former employees -- rather than the company who hired those employees -- for taking jobs with Apple, accusing those employees of violating non-compete clauses in their old job contracts.

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don't expect to get a cush job at RIM. You'll go through a interview and if hired be placed in a glorified call center position. taking calls from mindless sheeple that can't research for their own solution, muchless use a computer properly. I suspect once the economy collapses, these jobs will evaporate very quickly...

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Oh, so instead 'you' become a mindless automatron CSR who answers customer calls based, not upon actual technical acumen with the product - despite perhaps a 2 week orientation course - but the "sheeple" will be subjected to idiots who answer based upon queries into a data base with inadequately documented cases where they can guess that the documented procedure just MIGHT coincidentally address an issue similar enough such that 'you' can close the issue.

Other wise 'you' just blame the problem on operator error as the oh so skilled support actually has no idea what they just them to do - other than that some other Bozo has told someone else to try a similar routine in the database with a few matching terms.

Yup. Support is such a erudite job based upon YEARS of experience.

Blind, meet blind. ;-)

In regards to the 2 companies, it seems to me that a non-compete agreement might have substance were they competing for existing employees (eg: people who are EMPLOYED - despite the basic problems with even that!); but it makes NO sense to restrict a company from hiring those people for whom you have determined that you do not have a use!

If those folks are so important - keep them on the payroll anyd the agreement would cover them as they would be "employees", not simply the "unemployed"!

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What a Curb Job? ;)

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This is very frustrating, here you have Moto firing their workforce and RIM looking to hire, but they can't b/c of a NDA. Good thing Moto makes such great PDA's that they have to keep from hiring new people from RIM.

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