Lee said, “The importance of this is that it allows me to do my job. Starting today, I’m going to walk into Google and start work.”


Kai-Fu Lee, Ex Microsoft employee, can work for Google and help the company set up a research and development facility in China in the coming months while a case over his hiring comes to trial in January 2006, a judge decided on Tuesday.

Judge Steven Gonzalez of Superior Court of Washington State in King County, wrote in his 13-page preliminary injunction, that Kai-Fu Lee will be able to employ “his general knowledge, personal attributes, general reputation and skills” to set up and staff the Google center.

He can engage in activities such as establishing facilities, hiring engineers and administrators and interacting with public officials, according to the ruling, “Provided Dr. Lee does not recruit from Microsoft or use any confidential information from Microsoft”.

According to Judge Gonzalez’s decision that follows two days of hearings last week in which Microsoft and Google argued their points, Lee will also be able to meet with university administrators and professors and offer “general, non-technical advice to Google about how to do business in China”.

“Microsoft has not sufficiently shown that it has a clear legal or equitable right to enjoin Dr. Lee, pending trial, from establishing and staffing a Google Development Facility in China,” Judge Gonzalez wrote.

With this decision, the preliminary injunction thus fails to include a provision that barred Lee from doing work for Google in China, which was included in a temporary restraining order Judge Gonzalez had issued in July.

That temporary restraining order was issued shortly after Microsoft sued Google and Lee over his hiring, alleging breach of a noncompete and nondisclosure agreement Lee signed in 2000 when he became a Microsoft vice president.

Before joining Google, Lee was corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Natural Interactive Services Division. He had also been involved in Microsoft’s China operations.

Sharing is caring