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Federal District Judge Kenneth Karas said that he must “immediately cease his employment” with Apple until a second hearing, set for 18 November.

IBM claims that Papermaster signed an agreement forbidding him from accepting a job with a competitor for a year after leaving the company.

But Papermaster’s lawyer told the court that by forcing him to sit out a year would be “incredibly damaging to his career” and that the noncompete agreement doe not apply to Apple, since it makes devices very different products to IBM.

IBM disagreed.

“Electronic devices large and small are powered by the same type of intelligence, the microprocessor,” IBM argued.

Apple announced last week that Papermaster was replacing Tony Fadell as head of its iPod and iPhone engineering team. In a statement released following the court ruling it said that it would comply with the court order, but is “confident that Mark Papermaster will be able to ultimately join Apple when the dust settles”.