It seems that Oracle cannot officially name Mark Hurd as the co-president of their company, at least not yet.

HP has filed a lawsuit blocking the appointment for fear of possible disclosure of Oracle's trade secrets and confidential information.

The case seems similar to a past dispute between Apple and IBM concerning Mark Papermaster. Papermaster originally worked for IBM but eventually transferred to Apple.

However, it took him several months before he officially got on board the Apple bandwagon which was pretty much short-lived.

Mark Hurd signed a non-compete agreement in his contract with HP although many believe that these cases do not normally hold up at California-based courts.

It seems that these claims are indeed something of concern and seeing how Hurd can perform his duties without disclosing practices made at Oracle seems dubious and malicious at this point.

Oracle for its part has not yet issued a statement regarding the matter.

Via TechCrunch