HP says that Hurd was deeply involved in creating HP's business plans for the next two years, including specific plans to compete with Oracle in the enterprise market, and that there's no way Hurd can do his job at Oracle without revealing trade secrets and other confidential information he agreed to keep under wraps when he signed his employment contract with HP. What's more, he reaffirmed those commitments when he signed his severance package, so that's a double whammy -- and although California is usually pretty hostile to noncompete agreements, HP's trying to say Hurd violated one of those, too. HP's asked the court to prevent Hurd from working for Oracle or any other competitors at all, so we're guessing this one's going to be a fight -- we'll let you know
P.S.- The WSJ piece linked in More Coverage says there's no noncompete agreement in play here, but we're reading the complaint and HP specifically references a protective covenant forbidding Hurd from working for a competitor under certain conditions -- that certainly looks like a noncompete clause to us.