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Granting Microsoft's application, Judge Steven Gonzalez sitting in Washington State Superior Court, agreed that Lee's move to Google could mean that his insider knowledge both of the company's intellectual property and its business plans could damage its commercial interests.

Following the announcement by Google last week that it was opening the Chinese R&D centre headed by Dr Lee, Microsoft immediately sued Google claiming that Lee had broken the confidentiality agreement

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he signed in 2000 when he joined the company.

The temporary injunction is set to expire on Sept. 6th. The judge has set a hearing for that date to decide on a motion restricting Lee's work at Google until the full case goes to trial. The full hearing is set to take place on January 9th next year.

As is the way with these things, Google has countersued Microsoft claiming restraint of trade and insisting that Dr Lee had not broken his agreement with Microsoft as his speciality is not in search technology. The search engine claims the Microsoft suit is less to do with one employee's contract and more about a wider strategy to counter Google.

In a sworn statement to the court, Lee declared that in a meeting on July 15th, Bill Gates said he would be sued and that Microsoft planned 'to stop Google'.

Speaking to Associated Press, a Microsoft spokeswoman said 'We felt we needed to take this step to protect our sensitive business information and to ensure that Google and Dr. Lee honour the confidentiality and non competition agreements he made when he started working here'.