Google fought back against Microsoft this week, filing a legal motion arguing that attempts by Microsoft to prevent Kai-Fu Lee from joining Google were illegal.Google sought to nullify a non-compete agreement signed by Lee when he worked for Microsoft. Google filed a motion in California Superior Court in Santa Clara County, Reuters said.Lee is slated to join Google to spearhead new research and development efforts in China. Until Monday, Lee was corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Natural Interactive Services Division, IDG News Service reported. Google wants Lee, who is known for his work in the areas of speech recognition and artificial intelligence, to expand Google’s recruitment, research and devel-opment efforts in China. Microsoft filed suit earlier this week in King County Superior Court in Washington, asking the court to prevent Lee and Google from undertaking any actions that violate Lee’s non-compete employment agreement with Microsoft, as well as from “disclosing or misappropriating” any of Microsoft’s trade secrets or proprietary information, according to the complaint. “We are asking the Court to require Dr. Lee and Google to honor the confiden-tiality and non-competition agreements he signed when he began working for Microsoft,” the Redmond, Washington-based company said in a press statement. “Creating intellectual property is the essence of what we do at Microsoft, and we have a responsibility to our employees and our shareholders to protect our intellectual property. As a senior executive, Dr. Lee has direct knowledge of Microsoft’s trade secrets concerning search technologies and China business strategies. He has accepted a position focused on the same set of technologies and strategies for a direct competitor in egregious violation of his explicit contractual obligations.” Microsoft has good reason to go to the mat to stop Lee, said Rob Enderle, president of the Enderle Group. “The guy (Lee) was their central guy in China,” Enderle said. “He knows centralized strategy and is responsible for the lab in China. Undoubtedly, Google will be doing some of the things Microsoft does. If there is a handful of people who know what Microsoft is going to be doing, he’s one of them. “The typical rule of thumb is when an executive leaves he’s asked to sit out a year so the information is no longer relevant,” Enderle added. Google and Microsoft have become increasingly heated rivals in the areas of email and desktop search, and Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer has repeatedly expressed his intentions to unseat Google from its dominant position in the search engine space. Indeed, just Monday at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates referred to Google as a “faddishly hot” company, suggesting that the vendor is merely a flash in the pan. Technology Industry