It's no secret that BlackBerry has had a few high-profile departures from the organization over the past several months, but rumors that SVP of Software Sebastian Marineau-Mes was no longer working for the company have now turned out to somewhat accurate. The situation is a little bit convoluted and involves Apple, but a recently-posted Ontario Superior Court of Justice document offers a further look into the matter.
According to the documents, following discussions that began in September 2013, Apple offered Marineau-Mes the position of Vice President Core OS in December 2013. Marineau-Mes accepted the position and handed his formal resignation letter to BlackBerry on December 23rd. He indicated that he would likely be joining Apple in California in approximately two month's time, sparking an internal dispute between Marineau-Mes and BlackBerry.
Reason being, while Marineau-Mes was discussing the new position with Apple, he'd also signed a new contract with BlackBerry on September 27, 2013, promoting him to the position of Executive Vice-President, Platform Development. Although the promotion was not publicly disclosed, as part of the agreement Marineau-Mes was accountable to provide six months notice in the case of a resignation.
As there was no immediate, internal resolution on the matter, BlackBerry and Marineau-Mes headed to court to sort things out and in this case, the judge ruled in favor of BlackBerry. We reached out to BlackBerry for statement and they offered the following:
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 rather lengthy history at BlackBerry working on BlackBerry 10 and the BlackBerry PlayBook as well as QNX and in 2012, won the Top Innovator in Embedded Design for Software award. He's also previously spoken out about innovations happening within BlackBerry noting that BlackBerry is innovating faster than Apple, Google. How this will all play out for his positions at either BlackBerry or Apple remains to be seen.
Read more
The Apple Watch Ultra is perfect for more than just fitness buffs
The Apple Watch Ultra is positioned as a smartwatch in a class of its own among Apple's smartwatch lineup, and it's in a class of its own amongst all smartwatches. Here's why we love it!
BlackBerry welcomes Apple’s new commitment to your privacy
If you head on over to the Priv by BlackBerry website, you'll see it has now been updated with new comments from BlackBerry, welcoming the changes at Apple along with a new image of the Android-powered Priv by BlackBerry smartphone.
A look at what Apple came up with, borrowed, stole and re-invented for iOS 8
I missed out on iMore's WWDC live blog, so I'm just getting caught up on it all now. As expected, Apple went ahead and announced iOS 8 which promises to bring a ton of changes to the platform for both customers and developers and, like always with Apple, it's being touted as 'the biggest iOS release ever' — but Apple never had time to talk about them all. Only the key features were...
Follow all the happenings from WWDC 2014 live with iMore!
While we all love BlackBerry, there's no denying that today's a pretty big day in the tech sphere — and whatever your preference when it comes to mobile — it's always worth paying attention to what Apple is doing at its annual WWDC event which just so happens to start today. Most of the week is dedicated to developer sessions but the show is opened by a keynote address starring CEO Tim...