This happened to my dad. He was with a company for 25 years, since its founding. He knew everything there is to know about the particular product they made, not only from being there for so long, but from holding a variety of positions while there including fifteen years as operations manager. He never signed an NDA or noncompete or anything like that. The company was bought by an "investment group" which did it's typical cost-cutting stranglehold to cash in on the name before driving the company into the dirt. I tried to convince him he could start his own company, on his own terms, creating those products with the highest quality craftsmanship. He thought about it, but on his last day when the inevitable came, they coupled his severance pay to signing a shitload of these typically overbearing, draconian clauses.

I was just getting standard severance mandated by law (here in Brazil), but I was going to a sort-of competitor: both company were incubators.