In an at least temporary victory for Redmond giant Microsoft, in a lawsuit which defending Mountain View giant Google is calling “a charade”, a Washington state trial court has ordered ex Microsoft employee Kai-Fu Lee to refrain from starting his new job at Google to the extent that it would violate a non-compete agreement which he signed with Microsoft while working there.

While Google and Lee, both defendants in the Microsoft lawsuit, have stated that Lee would not be working on any competing technologies, and Lee has asserted that Google not only did not induce him to break his employment with Microsoft, but that they didn’t even recruit him - he contacted them - Judge Steven Gonzalez ordered Lee to refrain from “working on search technologies, business strategies, planning or development related to the computer search market in China, as well as…

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