BlackBerry Sues Exec for Breaking Contract Early to Work for Apple

12 years ago

BlackBerry’s SVP of Software, Sebastien Marineau-Mes, accepted an offer to work for Apple as their VP of Core OS last December. He gave notice to BlackBerry on December 23 that he was leaving the company, except there was one problem: he was breaking the terms of his employment contract (signed in Sept.) which required six months notice.

So to keep their executive from leaving, BlackBerry took him to court and an Ontario Judge sided with the latter, reports iMore. BlackBerry had this to say:

“BlackBerry will not stand by while a former employee violates his employment contract. It is unfortunate that we had to take this step, but we will do whatever is necessary to ensure that employees honor the agreements they make with us. When we enter into an agreement with an employee, as we have with Mr. Marineau, we expect him to honor his commitment just as he would expect that we will honor ours. We are pleased that the court has endorsed our position and ruled that the employee contract and its terms are valid.”

Marineau-Mes has been employed by BlackBerry since 2010 and helped launch QNX on the PlayBook and BlackBerry 10. Since the Ontario Court sided with BlackBerry, Marineau-Mes should start his time at Apple later in June.

Want to see more of our stories on Google?

P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!

3 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

wahwah

12 years ago

Oh well, at best we won’t have to hear of any more stories like this for a while lot longer. Please blackberry, speed up the leaving and sayin goodbyes already.