BlackBerry sued one of its executives who was going to leave to join Apple, in attempt to tie him to the company until summer. Sebastien Marineau-Mes, the senior vice-president for software with BlackBerry, was planning to leave the company since last September, and was offered the job of vice president of Core OS by Apple in December.

Marineau-Mes has resigned at the end of last year, but was told that he must stay until June, because under the terms of the contract promoting him to executive vice-president he had to give 6 months’ notice of his leaving. However, he signed that contract while BlackBerry was going through turmoil in which an expected buyout bid didn’t materialize. As a result, the company froze the promotions. Marineau-Mes argued that this fact effectively invalidated the promotion, taking into account the fact that his role as EVP had changed with the arrival of new CEO last November.

Nevertheless, the court took the side of the company and ruled that he must stay with BlackBerry until 23 June 2014, even though Marineau-Mes sought a declaration that the contract was invalid and enforceable.

Sebastien Marineau-Mes is known for working at QNX Software, which the tech giant bought over three years ago, where he was running a team of 600 people, with three vice-presidents below him. The company pointed out that the promotion to executive vice-president put him in charge of 3,000 people.

The ruling seems to shed light on the unrest inside BlackBerry, where some high-ranking executives have left after the appointment of the new CEO, who previously turned around the struggling software company Sybase.

Marineau-Mes explained that he hasn’t actually been working for BlackBerry since 2014, when he was put on “vacation pay”. However, the court found evidence of his promotion in internal emails, even though the move wasn’t announced due to promotion freeze. The company argued that it wanted Marineau-Mes to remain “available” – even though there was no sign it would ever call on his services.

BlackBerry admitted that they had no other option than taking this step, but promised it will do whatever is necessary to ensure that its employees honor the agreements made with the company. It is unknown what Apple thinks about this position.