From what I have read in the lawsuit, PayPal doesn't seem to be complaining that people have the right to seek better jobs, in fact that statement from Google comes across extremely childish. Their argument is that Bedier used trade secrets from PayPal to create Google Wallet, and used his knowledge of secret and upcoming PayPal products to sell it to the retailers (comparing an unfinished PayPal product to the finished Google Wallet).
That's not all; Paypal also alleges that another former Paypal employee recruited Bedier to Google while she was still under a 1 year no-recruitment contract, and in addition that Google was negotiating deals with Paypal and at the same exact time offering jobs to the lead Paypal executive (Bedier)
That just doesn't sound very convincing. If PayPal had an unfinished Wallet product before Google even started, what happened to PayPal's product? Did PayPal shelve it and now it's taking out its frustration on Google?
EDIT: Wow, lots of down votes just for asking a question?
In America we believe ideas are property, and that companies can call dibs on ideas to bully people who use this idea later. It's a really good idea, and also why we need to censor the internet so that our property isn't stolen.
This sounds like kind of a sarcastic comment, which it probably is, so I'll just point out that I don't think they're using patent or copyright law here to sue Google, but rather the domain of trade secret law, which SHOULD be there - not just to protect large companies, but smaller ones as well.
If I come up with a really great idea, and we're bringing it to market, then you decide you don't like me and run off to a potential competitor with larger resources to get it to market sooner (and assuming we have non-compete or NDA clauses in our mutual contract), I absolutely have a right to sue you and your new employer.
This is well established and I don't know why there is such a fuss about it - its pretty black and white issue when it comes to ethics and morals, rather than the patent/copyright issue which most certainly has its grey areas.
>This is well established and I don't know why there is such a fuss about it - its pretty black and white issue when it comes to ethics and morals [...]
I disagree, it's not a [necessary] natural conclusion based on logic axioms.
Aside from that consider this possible opposition: Patents are a contract of disclosure in return for a time-limited monopoly. I can well imagine that patents are a greater benefit to a society than industrial secrets; the knowledge is released in to the public domain and can be built on. Thus industrial secrets create a detriment, they hide knowledge that the society has spent resources on discovering (creating?).
Having briefly thought on this matter I think that forcing people to use patents to protect their IP instead of shackling inventors is probably the greater good. In any case presenting it as a done deal that needs no discussion is wrong IMO.
One could look at this from a Kantian perspective - if everyone hides their industrial/technological progress is that better or worse than everyone disclosing it?
