Attorneys for Microsoft and Google argued in court Tuesday over whether former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee should be allowed to start work for the search company.

    BEIJING, Sep. 7 (Xinhuanet)-- Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are battling in a Seattle courtroom, arguing over whether former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee should be allowed to start work for the search company.

    Microsoft is asking King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez to issue a preliminary injunction to stop former vice president Kai-Fu Lee from working for Google ahead of a trial scheduled for January 2006.

    Microsoft won a temporary restraining order against Lee and Google in July.

    Microsoft attorney Jeffrey Johnson argued in court that Lee, who built Microsoft's Beijing research and development center, is violating a non-compete contract that he signed with Microsoft because he has intimate knowledge of Microsoft's operations in China.

    "Dr. Lee should live up to his promise," said Johnson.

    That noncompete and confidentiality agreement forbids Lee for a year after leaving Microsoft from accepting employment or engaging in activities that compete with products, services or projects that he either worked on or gained confidential or proprietary knowledge of while employed by the company, according to Microsoft's motion for preliminary injunction, dated Aug. 22.

   Google's high-powered legal counsel John Keker argued that if Lee were allowed to join Google before the trial he would only work on setting up a China office and would do nothing on speech and search technologies, ostensibly two areas of biggest concern to Microsoft.

    He said that in his most recent role at Microsoft, Lee was in a different part of the software giant's organization than either MSN, a direct competitor to Google, or research efforts in China.

    "Microsoft has exaggerated who Dr. Lee is. They have exaggerated what he has done. They have exaggerated what he plans to do at Google," Keker said.

    The hearing, which will last another day, is the latest move by the Redmond, Washington-based software giant to stop Lee from working at Google while he is still obligated by the one-year non-compete agreement, which went into effect when Lee quit Microsoft in mid-July. Enditem

(Agencies)