Sept. 07--Hewlett-Packard filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop former CEO Mark Hurd from going to work at tech rival Oracle, as the controversy between Hurd and his former employer showed no signs of abating.

Legal experts said HP faces an uphill battle in trying to block Hurd from accepting a job as co-president and board member at Oracle, since California courts have a history of rejecting efforts to restrict employees from changing jobs.

But the lawsuit -- filed less than 24 hours after Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced Hurd's new appointment -- shows that Palo Alto-based HP is not ready sit quietly while its former top executive takes a senior position at a company that is increasingly competing with HP in the

commercial computer market.

"If nothing else, this is a strong shot across the bow," said attorney Larry C. Drapkin, co-chairman of the employment law group at the Los Angeles firm of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.

The lawsuit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court argues that Hurd's work at Oracle would violate a series of confidentiality agreements that he signed while he was CEO at HP, and which he agreed to follow for two years after he resigned last month in a scandal over his relationship with an HP marketing contractor.

"HP intends to enforce those agreements," an HP spokesman said in a brief statement. Hurd and Oracle declined to comment Monday.

The lawsuit does not name Oracle as a defendant, but it seeks both temporary and permanent orders against Hurd. The suit says Oracle's hiring of Hurd would "put HP's most valuable trade secrets and confidential information in peril."

While Oracle has not publicly described Hurd's new duties in detail, the HP lawsuit asserts: "In his new positions, Hurd will be in a situation in which he cannot perform his duties for Oracle without necessarily using and disclosing HP's trade secrets and confidential information to others."

The suit argues that Hurd, as HP's chief executive for the last five years, was privy to a variety of sensitive information about new products, sales and marketing strategies and even HP competitors. It mentions that, earlier this year, Hurd received a confidential internal assessment of Oracle as a competitor to HP.

But legal experts said California courts have rejected similar arguments as a reason to block employees from changing jobs in other cases. California law specifically does not allow for so-called "non-compete" conditions in employment contracts, which companies in other states use to restrict workers from jumping ship to competitors.

Some companies in California have tried to get around that law by focusing on the prospect that a key employee could exploit confidential information after moving to a job with a rival corporation, said Frederick Baron, chairman of the employment law practice at the Cooley law firm in Palo Alto.

"California courts have thus far rejected that argument, and so HP will have an uphill climb," Baron said.

Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman agreed. "This comes up, but courts are very skeptical because it affects people's livelihoods."

But if HP may have difficulty winning its case in court, experts said the two companies and Hurd may be motivated to work out a settlement to avoid the cost of litigation. Such a settlement could require Hurd to wait six months or a year before starting his new job, or perhaps restrict him from overseeing certain parts of Oracle's business, the experts said.

Contact Brandon Bailey at 408-920-5022. Follow him at Twitter.com/BrandonBailey.

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