You gotta be a big shot to sign one

Rico says no one ever asked him to sign a non-compete clause, so he guesses he was never a big enough cheese to warrant one. Apple, of course, is in a different league:

The courtroom tug-of-war between IBM and Mark Papermaster is getting nasty. Papermaster responded Friday to IBM’s attempts to prevent him from taking over the iPod unit at Apple. Papermaster argued that IBM doesn’t compete with Apple in consumer electronics. IBM reiterated that Papermaster violated a non-compete agreement. Now a judge is preventing Papermaster from working at Apple. The two big issues: How binding is a non-compete agreement? And is the mere fact that microprocessors run consumer and enterprise technology enough to keep Papermaster from his dream job?
In the Papermaster case, those questions loom large. If Papermaster, the executive in formerly in charge of IBM’s blade server unit, was going to Apple to run the xServe product line, Big Blue would have an easy argument to understand. But since Papermaster is going into consumer electronics– a place where IBM doesn’t play ball anymore– the executive has a good argument.