Noncompete Clauses: Signing Away the Right to Get a New Job

Re:Noncompete Clauses: Signing Away the Right to Get a New Job by etjossem on Saturday May 13, 2017 @04:10PM (#14332751)

Generally this is covered under a confidentiality agreement, which forbids the disclosure of the company's intellectual property. The designs you mention in your example would be considered work-for-hire, and (depending on how specific/proprietary they were) if you sold them to a competitor on the sly, you might be in violation of such an agreement.

So no, a noncompete - even one that only applies to the time you are employed by the company - isn't typically necessary.

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Re:Noncompete Clauses: Signing Away the Right to Get a New Job by smallnamespace on Saturday May 13, 2017 @09:26PM (#14333787)

Noncompetes are very common in finance because employees will gain access to proprietary knowledge (trading algorithms, signals, clients, strategies) that by definition have very high short-term (months to a year) value to a competitor.

Confidentiality doesn't work that well because proving that a former employee disclosed proprietary information is very difficult.

However, the ex-employee is generally paid at full salary for the time that they're unemployed, which seems like a very fair arrangement all around.

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Re:Noncompete Clauses: Signing Away the Right to Get a New Job by Spooky23 on Sunday May 14, 2017 @12:18AM (#14334193)

Usually when they really give a shit about the non-compete in finance, there's a term contract.

My friend did commercial banking. He had a one year non-compete, but it was geographically scoped, and he also had multi-year contracts that protected him from layoff. They needed to release him for specific causes, buy out the contract, release his contractual obligations, or some combo.

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Re:Noncompete Clauses: Signing Away the Right to Get a New Job by smallnamespace on Sunday May 14, 2017 @01:27AM (#14334365)

Another model I've seen is that everyone gets a blanket noncompete, but when the employee leaves, the business and legal folks get together and decide whether they really want to pay for the person to be unemployed.

Usually it depends on the exact new position, whether it's at a direct competitor, how senior the person was, etc.

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Re:Noncompete Clauses: Signing Away the Right to Get a New Job by hammock on Saturday May 13, 2017 @04:17PM (#14332788)

Extremely difficult to enforce, depending on the nature of the designs. Cf. the Waymo case for an example of an easier-than-average, but still difficult, case to enforce.

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Re:Noncompete Clauses: Signing Away the Right to Get a New Job by etjossem on Saturday May 13, 2017 @04:19PM (#14332792)

Agreed. It's all a negotiation, though, and from the perspective of the employee you're going to want to present the confidentiality agreement (and possibly a term-of-employment noncompete) as sufficient to ensure your loyalty. You should under no circumstances agree to anything that restricts your options after term of employment.

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