CORRECTION: It’s Not Pete Goglia But Sining Mao

We regret a severe confusion in our comments of the article entitled "Arbitration Award of Half Billion Dollar rendered vs. WD" and published on November 21, 2011. The guy involved in the Seagate/WD case is NOT Peter Goglia BUT Dr. Sining Mao. We thank Brad Driver, VP investor relations and corporate communications at Xyratex, one of our first readers who remarks the mistake.

No name of any individual were officially cited by Seagate and WD and we wanted to know who was involved in the case. After some research, we found that Goglia was executive director R&D at Seagate, from 1987 to 2004, and then VP R&D at WD, a profile corresponding to the press releases of both companies. More than that, we discovered an article from IDG News Service in 2004 with the following sentence: "Hard drive maker Seagate Technology LLC is seeking a court injunction to prevent a former employee, Pete Goglia, from going to work for Western Digital Corp., saying Goglia knows too much about Seagate’s hard-drive reading and writing technology to work for a competitor."

We understand the reaction of Xyratex since Goglia is now the company’s senior VP and CTO for the storage infrastructure division without any relation at all with the arbitration decision.

 No, the man involved is Dr. Sining Mao, 48, currently VP, device technology development, magnetic heads operation for WD, residing in Fremont, CA. Prior to WD, he was senior director of advanced transducer development at Seagate recording head operation in Minneapolis, MN. And he also served as R&D director at Seagate Ireland (Londonderry, NI) from 2004-2005. He owns fifty U.S. and international issued patents on magnetic thin films and devices.

Here is the new version of our article after replacing
the name Peter Goglia by Sining Mao:

This is an old story.

Seagate attempted to block the hire of Sining Mao, claiming that he will not be able to avoid disclosing Seagate confidential information in the course of his new job.

On October 4, 2006, plaintiff Seagate filed a complaint against WD and Sining Mao in the Minnesota Fourth Judicial District Court serving Hennepin County. The complaint alleges claims based on supposed misappropriation of trade secrets and seeks injunctive relief and unspecified monetary damages, fees and costs. On June 19, 2007, Sining Mao filed a demand for arbitration with the American Arbitration Association. A motion to stay the litigation as against all defendants and to compel arbitration of all Seagate’s claims was granted on September 19, 2007. On September 23, 2010, Seagate filed a motion to amend its claims and add allegations based on the supposed misappropriation of additional confidential information, and the arbitrator granted Seagate’s motion. The arbitration hearing commenced on May 23, 2011 and concluded on July 11, 2011. The parties were filing post-arbitration briefs in August 2011. The arbitrator was expected to render a decision in the fall of 2011.