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Judge says non to ex-Ubisoft exec's Vivendi move

  • By Curt Feldman, GameSpot
  • Posted May 2, 2006 5:51 pm PT

Martin Tremblay's move to Vivendi blocked in Quebecois courts, thanks to a non-compete clause he once defended.

Martin Tremblay this week has found himself in the spotlight--maybe a fitting place to be for someone assuming a rather grand position amid the sprawling Vivendi (formerly Vivendi Universal) organization in star-studded Los Angeles. On April 19, Tremblay was hired to be Vivendi Games' president of worldwide studios.

But that move has been tripped up by some legal maneuvering. Tremblay's former colleagues in Montreal have filed an injunction in Quebec Superior Court, according to the company. The document, an interlocutory injunction, asks that Tremblay "abstain and cease immediately, directly or indirectly, competing with applicant Ubisoft and cease immediately working, directly or indirectly, within the territories of Canada, the United States and Mexico, for his own behalf or on behalf of any third party, in any business which manufactures or commercializes video products that may compete with products sold, manufactured or developed by applicant Ubisoft."

Interestingly, Tremblay is now the subject of a non-compete policy he once defended--most memorably when it was applied to five former Ubisoft Montreal staffers who left the studio in 2003 and took jobs with the Electronic Arts operation in the same town.

At the time, Tremblay was adamant that Ubisoft's insistence that new hires sign non-complete documentation (in effect for one year after they leave the company) was perfectly legal in Quebec. "We use [the non-compete] if we feel the people [leaving] have too much information," Tremblay told GameSpot. Tremblay further explained that in the studio's eight years of existence, it chose to block the move of only five employees--a tiny percentage of the hundreds of staffers who have come and gone in that span of time.

That number can now be increased to six, with Tremblay himself caught in the crosshairs.

According to Ubisoft, the injunction filed on Monday is set to expire on May 9. At that time, the company can choose to seek additional legal powers to prevent Tremblay from working for Vivendi Games--and by the language of the court, the odds appear to favor just that:

"With full knowledge of the situation [Tremblay] chose to be employed by Vivendi, knowing full well that he was heading for a serious confrontation," Judge Robert Mongeon said yesterday. "To provoke such a confrontation...if only for the fact that he himself had commanded the litigation involving Ubisoft and Electronic Arts in 2003...[and] now complain of the resulting inconvenience demonstrates, at the very least, a brazen attitude."

24 Comments

  • linmukai

    Posted May 5, 2006 3:57 pm GMT

    What goes around comes around as they say... I found this highly amusing myself.

  • thepyrethatburn

    Posted May 3, 2006 11:55 pm GMT

    I suspect we're commenting less about Ubisoft's management practices and more about Tremblay falling prey to his own karma. Whether he was "strongly encouraged to leave" or not does not change the fact that, when the shoe was on the other foot, he gleefully defended this no-compete policy.

  • yboucher

    Posted May 3, 2006 4:05 pm GMT

    Guys, y'all need to STFU because none of you know the real story behind this. The truth is, Tremblay was strongly encouraged to leave by the HQ in France. They basically forced him to resign, so that they wouldn't have to bear the negative image of firing him. You guys think Ubisoft makes great games and all, and that's true (thanks in MOST part to the Montreal studio), but the truth is the French management has ALWAYS been known to be a*ses, and that still goes on today. The French just don't know how to do business properly and respectfully, but that's for another debate.

  • sabru8

    Posted May 3, 2006 10:01 am GMT

    okay....?

  • runforrestrun

    Posted May 3, 2006 9:51 am GMT

    [This message was deleted at the request of a moderator or administrator]

  • ZEELIX

    Posted May 3, 2006 9:23 am GMT

    hhmmm.. im not sure if i should like or hate this guy???

  • paradyme777

    Posted May 3, 2006 6:30 am GMT

    Well what goes around comes around, right?

  • chrisdojo

    Posted May 3, 2006 5:46 am GMT

    owned.

  • Lestat_1_basic

    Posted May 3, 2006 5:35 am GMT

    [This message was deleted at the request of a moderator or administrator]

  • CaptainSmirk

    Posted May 3, 2006 12:35 am GMT

    No loss, really. Blizzard will keep making money and Vivendi will keep losing it. They should just fire everyone else and give Mike Morhaime control of the company. Blizzard itself is twice as big as the entire rest of Vivendi anyway...

  • hcane

    Posted May 2, 2006 11:53 pm GMT

    Well, what comes around goes around.

  • thepyrethatburn

    Posted May 2, 2006 11:35 pm GMT

    Having worked in the tech industry for a few years, that clause has become fairly standard along with, for all intents and purposes, signing away your rights to any patents you may create for up to a year after you leave a company.



    That having been said, karma sure is a *****.

  • jasonmperry70

    Posted May 2, 2006 9:29 pm GMT

    "Brazen attitude"? Yup, that sound's like a Vivendi exec, all right.....

  • 7thRonin

    Posted May 2, 2006 9:19 pm GMT

    [This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

  • thedarkoracle

    Posted May 2, 2006 8:35 pm GMT

    Congratulations, Mr. Tremblay, you are the first person I have read about to own himself.

  • NeoJedi

    Posted May 2, 2006 8:14 pm GMT

    Good to see some news coming out from my little part of the world... but yeah, Tremblay got caught in the act! Hypocrites never win.

  • Mantis_248th

    Posted May 2, 2006 7:32 pm GMT

    ahhahahah serves him right to get hosed like that..

  • caje47

    Posted May 2, 2006 7:31 pm GMT

    Sucks for him.

  • peon123

    Posted May 2, 2006 6:26 pm GMT

    man whats wrong with martin tremble bay

  • kappachan

    Posted May 2, 2006 6:16 pm GMT

    Maybe Martin Tremblay was assaulted, knocked in the head a couple of times, and forgot the non-compete agreement he oh so happened to sign... It happens, although highly unlikely. But that still doesn't get him out of the legal bindings he is currently stuck in.

  • korn18m

    Posted May 2, 2006 6:13 pm GMT

    So he thinks it's ok to use this against others who leave Ubisoft, but when it comes to him, it shouldn't apply? This double standard setting a-hole is getting what he deserves.

  • eckertt001

    Posted May 2, 2006 5:58 pm GMT

    Glad to read a hypocrite is geting his just deserts.

  • CajunExplosion316

    Posted May 2, 2006 5:54 pm GMT

    so sad

  • blackIceJoe

    Posted May 2, 2006 5:53 pm GMT

    that stinks

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