Motorola sues iPhone sales executive over trade secrets

Motorola is suing a former executive now employed by Apple's iPhone sales division, charging him with the theft of trade secrets.

Bloomberg found the suit, which was filed by Motorola on Thursday in Illinois state court. Michael Fenger is the defendant, and according to the complaint he is now vice president for global iPhone sales after joining Apple in March.

Prior to joining Apple, Fenger was an executive for Motorola in that amorphous MBA-created part of the world known as EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa). As such, he was in a position to know almost everything about Motorola's business practices and strategies, and Motorola thinks he is now using that information to harm the company and help Apple, according to Bloomberg.

Apple's rise in the mobile world has come at the same time as Motorola's fall, but it's hard to imagine the two are linked. Motorola's problems are largely of its own making: I'm pretty sure Apple didn't play a role in Motorola's decision to flood the market with cheap handsets and its inability to come up with a successor to the Razr.

Motorola wants $1 million back from stock options awards granted to Fenger and it wants to bar him from working at Apple for two years, retroactive to March, Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg said attempts to reach Fenger for comment were unsuccessful.

[Galaxy5]

Shorter MOT: "Waaaaaaahhhhhhhh!"

[johnnydfred]

Under Shameless Comments: Motorola's only remaining trade secret? Wait for it...How they've stayed afloat for so long after the Razr. Ba-dum-bum.

[michaelo1966]

This frivolous lawsuit wisely illustrates why CA wisely won't enforce non-competes. If this guy was so smart -- and he probably was, or Apple wouldn't have hired him -- he probably languished un-listened to at Motorola until he finally left. Now they don't want him working for anybody else but because CA won't uphold non-competes they have to try fabricating a trade secret claim. Hey Motorola: if the "secrets" were that important why didn't you use them to retain and build market share? This is a good illustration of just how pathetic Motorola is.

[SeizeCTRL]

Anyone who thinks this guy won't use what he knows from Motorola over at Apple is just lying to themselves.

You really cannot expect someone to go from one job to another and not use previous knowledge at the new locale.

Now whether or not that information was harmful to Motorola while at the same time beneficial to Apple will remain to be seen.

The one thing I actually like about Motorola is the Motorola Phone Tools software that allows you to connect to your phone and do all sorts of things. Why other phone manufacturers have yet to follow that baffles me. It's pure genius to have a built-in ringtone maker, contact backup, text message back up and so on. The software should be free with every mid to high end phone.

[genus11]

Motorola needs to look for acquisition. The best one is Taiwan's HTC. Not sure how easy to do that in Taiwan, but it's doable.

[inverse137]

Baseless...

They can't deny him a livelihood. If they didn't want him to work for the competition after he left Motorola they should have paid him to stay home and play Quake or something.

And I'm not exaclty certain I would say he left for the "competition." Can you really compare the Razor to the iPhone?

[Galaxy5]

MOT phone tools might be nice, but I prefer the iTunes approach - easy enough for beginners, and flexible enough for experts.