[Gllug] [OT] Non-compete clauses in employment contracts

[Sean Burlington]

Tethys wrote:
> Doug Winter writes:
> 
> 
>>These are quite enforceable here, unless they cover so much of your 
>>available potential employers as to be restraint of trade, rendering you 
>>unemployable.  That's a value judgement a court would have to make.
> 
> 
> Don't know where you get that from, as in general, they are NOT
> enforcable. You have a contract between you and your employer. At
> the point yout employment ceases, that contract ceases, and anything
> it contains, including non-compete clauses, becomes invalid. The
> exception is clauses that say "don't leave to set up a rival business
> and steal our customers". Although the contract ceases when you leave
> the company, if there's any suggestion that you were in contact with
> those customers with a view to arranging future business while you
> were still employed by your previous company, then they have a valid
> case.


A few years ago I was working a dotboom company and they looked into 
this - and the legal opinion arrived at was pretty much in agreement 
with the above.

A contract can stop you taking clients with you when you leave and 
prevent you from taking (eg) program code to the competition.

It cannot prevent you working for the competition (possibly unless you 
are compensated) - it can't even stop you from taking your skills and 
experience to the competition.

So you can't take your code with you when you go - but you can take the 
experience to create the same thing.

And in fact even if you do take code and contact clients, the 
ex-employer may find it difficult to stop you.

-- 

Sean
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