IBM sues data mining man poached by M$

[Alpine]

It wants a lot of money back from him

BIG BLUE took legal action against former employee and Fellow Rakesh Agrawal, who left IBM to join Microsoft in May as a Fellow in the fellowship of the Vole.


Agrawal is credited with being largely responsible for inventing "data mining" but IBM alleges he breached his contract and exercised options despite knowing that Microsoft is a competitor.

The action, filed in a New York district court, said Agrawal was employeed for 16 years and latterly held the position of IBM Fellow, which he held until he quit Big Blue on March 1st this year. IBM claimed it made efforts to retain Agrawal with stock options as recently as September 16th last year, but said a clause he signed meant he couldn't exercise such options if he joined a competitor within 12 months of leaving.

Agrawal, said IBM, exercised a number of options, the last being on February 14th 2006. In all, he cashed in $777,564.76 worth of IBM stock.

But, alleges Big Blue: "Agrawal knew that Microsoft is a major competitor of IBM's. Agrawal knew that by working for Microsoft he would be rendering services for a competitor within 12 months of exercising options and had no intention of repaing the gains he realised as a result of exercising these options."

He knew that by working for Microsoft he violated the provisions of the IBM options, alleged Big Blue. "Thus, Agrawal had the intent not to comply with the provisions of the 1994 plan and the 2005 agreement and thereby intended to defraud IBM with these material false representations."

IBM said that if it had known that Agrawal was to join Microsoft as a Technical Fellow it wouldn't have allowed him to exercise the options. It's asked him for the $777,564.76 back, but claims he hasn't replied to a letter. So it's taking him to court.

the INQuirer