The legal dispute between Apple and IBM over Mark Papermaster has finally reached its end, after the U.S. District Court for Southern New York cleared him to serve as senior vice president of Devices Hardware engineering for the Cupertino-based company.

 

Apple also confirmed that starting April 24, Papermaster will begin fulfilling his role as head of the iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams, and start reporting to CEO Steve Jobs.

 

Papermaster has a 26-year-long history with IBM, where he served as vice president of the Blade Development unit. IBM sued Papermaster last year, contending that his knowledge of confidential information would cause the company irreparable harm if disclosed to the competition.

 

In addition to that, IBM also based its legal claims on a contractual agreement signed by Papermaster, according to which the former vice president had to wait at least one year after terminating his contract with IBM before accepting a job with the competition.

 

As part of the “Integration and Values Team” for the past two years, Papermaster gained extensive knowledge of IBM’s strategic plans, the company wrote in last year’s filing. This information is critical to IBM’s success, and should not be made accessible to the public or other companies, IBM further said at the time.

 

However, now that the matter has been settled, Papermaster may resume his job at Apple six months after leaving IBM, although he remains subject to his contractual agreements that prohibit him from disclosing or using any IBM confidential information. Furthermore, Papermaster will also need to certify in July 2009 and October 2009 that he has complied with the above mentioned obligations.

 

Until October 24, 2009, one year after Papermaster’s departure from IBM, the court will continue to have jurisdiction over the matter, IBM said.