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

[Tethys]

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.

Of course, that's not to say that a company won't try it on, and hope
to get a favourable decision from a judge (the law, as they say, is
an ass, and the courts are fallible just like anyone else). The advice
I've had from a friend with a background in employment law is to either
sign a contract without them, or with them if they're so outrageous that
they would be laughed out of court. For example, one of my contracts
specified that I wouldn't engage in the same type of work within a 30
mile radius of the company I was leaving for a period of 18 months.
Being a programmer working in London, that would essentially have put
me out of work, and there was no hope of it ever being enforced...

Tet
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