Yeah that would be solved by NDAs and trade secrets.
Then if you write a stock trading app... Did you have any contact with the team that was writing the companies stock trading app, did you sign any NDAs about that, did you receive any information about that, did you have any trade secrets? No? Then they shouldn't have any claim.
IP assignment and non-competes should be eliminated for non-managerial employees.
Or for IP assignment it needs to be whittled down to narrowly apply only to what the employee actually worked on, not anything the business does.
Re:The case for banning non-competes
by s1artibartfast on Friday July 16, 2021 @02:23PM
(#27859453)
NDAs and trade secrets are difficult to enforce in practice for many types of ip that can't go in a patent, like market and product strategy.
That is not a good reason for every software engineer at the company to be under overly-broad non-competes.
It's just semantics, but these restrictions are usually not covered by "non-compete agreements". They are more often called something like an "IP assignment agreement", where you agree that anything you produce in your employer's area of work while you are employed there, the IP belongs to your employer.
In practice, many employees simply ignore these agreements, and it usually works out fine. The FAANG companies aren't in the business of suing small companies started by ex-employees. Asking legal is pointless, they will just tell you that everything is forbidden. So just ignore your legal department and work on your side project.