Papermaster? Hmm.. Never heard of him
It looks like Apple’s love affair with Mark Papermaster, the golden boy Apple hired from IBM to take over the whole iPod thing once Tony Fadell left, may have hit a rough patch. 9to5Mac is reporting that all traces of Mark Papermaster have been removed from Apple’s executive bio’s page.
Above: 9to5 managed to grab this pic before Papermaster’s bio was removed so we can all remember the good times.
IBM has filed suit against Papermaster for violating the 1-year “no compete” clause in his contract which legally bars him from accepting a job with a competing company, and a NY judge has ordered that PaperMaster “immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc. until further order of this court“. Papermaster claims that in his 25 years at IBM, he never heard the company describe Apple as a competitor, an argument which sounds a little lame to us, but we suppose one could make the argument that his new role as head of the iPod/iPhone division doesn’t compete with any current IBM offerings.
Apple, for its part, issued a statement claiming they were confident they would win the suit “when the dust settles”, so odds are Papermaster’s removal is simply Apple performing its due diligence until this mess get’s worked out (meaning, until Apple presents IBM with a giant-sized novelty check with a bunch of 0’s).
In the meantime they should put you in charge of that division DOC!
The parsing of competitor should be interesting – well, interesting may be a stretch – since IBM was a supplier of PPC chips for so many years, and they sold off their PC business a few years ago. Claiming Blades compete with Xserver is skicing it kind of thin.
I’m guessing Apple will offer a Chinese wall, maybe for two or three years, not just the one.
Doc can you make one of those checks out to me? Thanks!
Love the check! And Eight Dollars. 😀