The dispute between Microsoft and Google over the latter's hiring of Kai-Fu Lee raises fascinating issues of property rights.

An old adage of Wall Street says to be wary of investing in any firm whose capital assets go home every night at 5:00 p.m. But that is the whole tech world, which is built on IP. Some of this is protected by patents or copyrights, of course, and by brand names and customer lock-in or inertia, but a big chunk of it, and especially the inchoate ideas that represent THE FUTURE, are in the neurons of the workers. And this includes not just ideas generated by each worker on his or her own, but the ideas received from others and those produced by the synergistic hive as a whole.

So who owns what, or whom? One can make powerful arguments on all sides. The bedrock principle that a person must own him/herself vs. the unfairness of allowing a person to educate him/herself at the expense of one company, and then pick up and sell the value of this investment to another. The imperatives for internal circulation of ideas vs. the creativity sparked by inter-firm mobility. The impenetrable issues of knowing exactly which employee did what.

The lawyers keep crafting their non-compete agreements and employment contracts and the world keeps presenting new conundrums. And Dr. Lee is, for the moment, prohibited from "working on search technologies, business strategies, planning or development related to the computer search market in China, as well as any other areas he worked in while employed at Microsoft."