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Seagate Says Ex-Employee Can't Work For Competitor
deweller writes "According to a story at MacCentral, Hard drive maker Seagate Technology LLC is seeking a court injunction to prevent a former employee, Pete Goglia, from going to work for Western Digital Corp. any time in the next 2 years, saying Goglia knows too much about Seagate's hard-drive reading and writing technology to work for a competitor."
If Pete Goglia signed a non-compete agreement with Seagate then it has stipulations preventing him from working at a competitor for a specified time. It was an agreement he may have signed to work for the company. It is nothing uncommon in the US to have this kind of contract. Usually, the company will give you stock options and the if the stock options go below the strike price than you have to pay the difference in the current stock price if you break this agreement.
Do they have a no-compete clause in his contract? If not, they're going to lose, as that's standard practice in cases like this.
When I read about this story when it broke on Friday I found nothing that mentioned that Goglia had signed an NDA *but* he had been working there for seventeen years and was the executive director of the Recording Head Division.
Now, if Seagate hadn't had the man sign some sort of NDA that specifically stated he wouldn't work for a competitor for two years then I really don't think that they have too much to stand on until WD comes out with a strikingly similar product (which inevitably they will).
Obligatory "This has nothing to do with my rights online, so why is it in YRO?" post.
Moo.
Anyone know? No mention but it's pretty standard.
Evil... NonCompete
Stop signing your life over to suits, and try and understand that information should be free. You build the chains that bind you. Don't honour IP law, it's actively antiscientific.
Maybe he should've used that as bribery to get a raise =D
I see no problem with this whatsoever, provided of course that Seagate does the only reasonable thing and pays this ex-employee the greater of what he'd have earnt working at Seagate and what he was offered at Western Digital over the next two years.
Now, if they aren't willing to do this, they are essentially trying to stop this guy from earning a living by working in his field. And that is unreasonable and illegal in most places.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Unless they can provide him with a job, or some other way for him to make a living. I don't see it right if they prevent him from finding another job.
However if he does know 'top-secret' stuff, and spills the beans to Western, Seagate will have a case against him, and Western Digital
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Especially one for 2 years? Seagate is probably just trying to stall it out, because they really don't have a chance in hell of making it stick.
These exist on the very fringe of legal contract law. I would be very surprised if any of them have withstood a jury trial. Can a legal agreement which prevents a worker from working to feed his family be legal? Non-competes are valid even if you are fired, meaning they can fire you and prevent you from working for a competitor, which is basically contractually enforced unemployment. This would seem to be highly UnAmerican(tm) and I think the courts would frown on it.
What is the case law precendent?
The story doesn't say but, if Seagate doesn't have a non-compete contract with him, then they don't have a leg to stand on.
Being a lamer who hasn't even read the article, it seems that complaints like this are obstacles for people who specialize.
If you know a lot about hard disks, and you like using hard disks, isn't it better for the world to work on, oh, say, a hard disk project?
Maybe I should have taken more than one major in college, so that when my employer decides I'm not allowed to use my expertise, I can use the other one.
I have been told it is not possible to enforce a no-compete clause in California? Anyone with further information care to comment?
where do they expect him to work? McDonalds for the next 2 years?
Do to long periods without intimate female companionship, I've discovered too much information about how to pleasure myself, that I am not allowed to have sex for two years.
Yes, that will now be my official excuse.
Pay him a salary for two years so he doesn't need to work for the competitor. :/
"The empty vessel makes the greatest sound." -- William Shakespeare; Henry V, 4. 4
There's these little things called "non-compete clauses" in those shiny contracts with all the big numbers you're happy to sign when somebody is promising you a check. It's reality. It sucks. Welcome to life.
...unfortunately my contract requires that I don't divulge this kind of information! -1 Lame Joke
It's called freedom,people.Or did it vanish when greed appear?
Minnesota is not a Right To Work state. I'm not a lawyer, but they might actually have a case.
Residents of states without a Right To Work law are not protected from this kind of non-compete suit in the same way as RTW residents are.
The story is a little bit light on the details and does not say whether or not the guy signed NDA's and other legalese. My guess is that he probably did have to sign a document preventing him from doing the exact thing he is attempting to do, in which case, he should have known better =). Yeah, it sucks that he can't go work there, but if he signed legal documents preventing him from doing so, there really is nobody to blame but himself. If he didn't sign anything, then yes, Seagate sucks and is among the ranks of *insert other big, evil, IP-sucking corporations here*
-Matt
Duke '05
It's very simple: the bigger company will always win.
CIA tells ex-employee that he can't go work for the KGB.
I don't see what the big deal is - if you want to work developing ultra-bleeding-edge technology, it seems reasonable that the entity funding that research restrict what you're allowed to do after the fact.
Just make sure you're appropriately compensated for not being able to work in the same industry for two years, and if not, take a different job.
And no, I don't want to hear the 'But another job may not be an option!' response either - if you're "good" enough to work on such a project to begin with, you're good enough to get a different job.
And if you're not good enough to get another job unless you just worked in the ultra-bleeding-edge research department of your potential new employer's competitor, that's an even MORE convincing reason that it's quite reasonable to restrict your future employment.
paintball
"Obligatory "This has nothing to do with my rights online, so why is it in YRO?" post."
Obligatory Answer: Your Right to work anywere you want without interferance.
If it's in the terms of employment, he doesn't have a prayer. Think of employment as a contract. If there's a no compete clause, that's it, he violates the contract and is liable.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Am I the only one reminded of a daughter with bio based holographic implants, and a father so desperate to leave his company that he has signed up to be extracted by a small team of ninja/mercenaries?
Damn, Seagate's lead man trying to leave the company, hopefully things aren't as bad as Gibson imagined. Right?
According to this article, he did sign something.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
Wendy's guns for top McDonald's execs to learn french fry secrets.
I have not RTFA, but I have heard and experienced this before. It is part of the contract that employers 'make' employees sign when they join the company. I have only seen this enforced on people who where part of the architecture team of one company and had insights and access into more then their own contributions. Is it fair to prevent these 'insiders' to work for the direct competition? As much as I don't think so it is nothing more or less evil then companies patenting every single thought their employees come up with.
my 2 cents.
He signed a non compete right? Everyone does, that's how a company protects itself.
I would like to see the law changed so that the company is forced to pay the ex-employee full wages and benefits for the length of the non-compete period. If the information is really that valuable, it would be a small price to pay. Otherwise, employees are put into a position where they can't work in their field of expertise, often with little or no compensation.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If all of Seagate's technology is protected by patents anyway, where's the problem? If he uses any of their super-secret hard drive technology, they can file patent infringement suits. That's what the patent system is for.
Approximately every contract for a technical job in the history of ever (ok, maybe the last decade or so) has had one of these no-compete clauses built in as a partial safeguard against corporate espionage. It sucks, but that's life.
Assuming he actually signed a non-compete agreement. If not, well, tough for Seagate.
paintball
now they have to kill him
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I worked for a company for a while without one. Soon I was working on projects which were bringing in millions a month, then they wanted me to sign one. I told them I would let my lawyer look it over, I ended up leaving the company before I had to sign, went ot a competitor ;).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As a law clerk who has researched this specific topic extensively over the passed few weeks, I can say that 1) even with a non-compete agreement, the enforceability of such a clause is not a foregone conclusion (it is subject to reasonability tests e.g. duration and geographic limitation in most states); and 2) without a non-compete agreement, there is almost no legal precedent for Seagate to enjoin someone from practicing in their chosen profession/field of expertise. Should be an interesting outcome should there be no agreement in place.
If his contract stated that he couldn't work for a competitor upon leaving the company, or if his pink-slip included a non-compete clause, then hes morally, and most probably legally, obliged not to take the job.
If he didn't sign any of these, he should be able to take the job. However, chances are his contract obtained non-disclosure agreement. I don't know who has the onus of proof, but if WD put out a product similar to what this guy was working on at Seagate, seagate can point at this guy and scream "He told them", and I'd say WD would have a lot of difficulty proving that he didn't violate the non-disclosure agreement.
If the contact contained neither a non-compete nor a non-disclosure agreement, Seagate should find whoever wrote that contract 17 years ago, and shoot them.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
The article says nothing about a non-compete agreement. All it says is that Seagate claims that the employee knows too much and that he will "inevitably disclose some of that proprietary information".
http://www.akingump.com/docs/publication/412.pdf
Only in very particular situations are non-compete clauses applicable in CA, and given that the employee worked for Seagate for 17 years, he may not have even signed one when he joined the company.
Was he fired? Did he leave for a better-paying job?
If he was fired, then Seagate chose to let him go and it seems to me the only legal argument they would have is if a clause was built into his contract or NDA that prevented him from working for a competitor for a set period of time.
However, if the employee left on his own, it could be argued that he intends to use Seagate trade secrets over at WD (God I hope so; maybe then WD could produce a decent hard drive).
That aside, I could see Seagate having some legal ground here, although I don't really know how far they'll get if they don't have these technologies patented and thus available for public perusal anyway.
Seems like Seagate's argument is potentially reasonable, but very shaky legally -- I'd be surprised if they got anywhere with this, at least without agreeing to compensate the worker for lost salaries, plus lost advancement opportunities for the next two years.
--------------------- -me, Crusher of those who are Foolish (don't be foolish)
Probably, unless he signed a non-compete, about all Seagate can do is is cost him a bundle in legal fees. (Hopefully WD will cover those fees.)
However, that could depend on the state laws. I was surprised by how different things were between California, my home state, and Georgia, where I am now. Interestingly, both states call themselves "Right To Work" states. In California, that means that an employer can't prevent you from working for another employer later; non-competes in that state are not binding. In California, you do indeed have the right to work, and no prior employer can restrict that right.
In Georgia, on the other hand, things are quite different. Here, from what I learned through the grapevine, the employer seems to hold most of the cards, and has most of the rights. You can be terminated at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all, and you have no recourse. Even so, you can still be held to a noncompete. This, apparently, is supposed to encourage employment, and thus they call this the "Right to Work". I think that's an AMAZING display of spin. In English, this Southern euphemism translates to "Right to Bend Over".
Moral: if you don't want to be held to a noncompete, make sure to sign it in California and make sure that your next job is also in California. Unless something has changed in the last two or three years, all they can do to you there is rattle their sabers a bit.
We are missing a lot of facts here, and it is easy to jump to conclusions. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Well, as long as we are jumping. Clearly this guy isn't stupid. I'm sure he talked to a lawyer before he left Seagate. I'm sure he even expected a lawsuit. But, in the end, the lure of big money was probably too good.
If / when we get more facts about this, then we can discuss. As it is, we know nothing.
There simply isn't enough information presented in the story as to whether the parties on either side have broken any laws or behaved unethically. It is possible that legally you may be prevented from taking a job with a competitor. Whether that is the case depends in no small part upon what the laws are in your state and what contract you signed when you began employment. It's entirely possible that legally and ethically he cannot take a job with his competitor (at least for a limited time). It is also entirely possible that he can and should be allowed to. Given the scanty information provided, it's simply not possible to decide.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
From the article: "This particular employee, who has been here for a very long time, has extensive knowledge of proprietary and confidential information," said Brian Ziel, a Seagate spokesman. "We believe he will inevitably disclose some of that proprietary information that he has gained through working at Seagate."
Technology always leaves us with these fascinating situations. In the Good Old Days(tm), an apprentice would work under a master for a number of years. When he left, what he had learned was known as "experience".
Now, it seems to me the company is claiming this man's knowledge as corporate property. By denying him the right to seek employment elsewhere, they are effectively saying that not just the patented information this man knows is the company's, byut also, that the thinking processes and hands-on experience that come with 17 years of work in some way belong to the company as well. Which is utterly ridiculous.
If he was stupid enough to sign a non-compete, then he's probably stuck. But to claim that every method this man could use is proprietary to Seagate is stupid. Really, really stupid.
It's not what you know, or even who you know- It's how many people recognize your damn
Wouldnt patents just make the whole thing not matter anyway? Otherwise, what are they for!?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If I remember my business law course correctly... Unless that employee signed a contract or some other form of agreement saying that he can not work for a competitor, then Seagate has no official legal leg to stand on. And there is a chance the employee never signed one considering he worked with Seagate for 17 years.
:O
You can't really blame Seagate for wanting to protect their trade secrets though. I'm just wondering how much notice this employee gave Seagate before leaving like that. It is rather suspicuous for someone to just switch companies like that... There could be a lot of money behind this!
Fear the turtle farming ninja!
In Virgina, those contracts are illegal I think. Something about being a "right to work" state.
In many states, Including Oregon, where I am from the non-competes are often uninforceable because they are a restriant of trade. Pretty much any "at will" state, where an employer can fire you for any or no reason at all without concequence also comes with the tradeoff of non-competes being worth less than the paper they are written on. The exception to this is if someone leaves your company to work for the competition. However in most cases these are folks who were laid off or terminated. If you cannot provide this person with work, you absolutely cannot tell them what work they may find elsewhere.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
When you say "horning in on your resources", do you mean that when GM fires a CAD engineer, they have the right to keep that CAD engineer from doing CAD for the next two years, thereby ruining his resume?
That seems odd... thanks for the case law info though!
I had to sign a non compete when i ran a Pizza Hut quite a while back.. don't know if they'd have ever enforced it. Considering i never knew what the mix was in their little "secret dough concoction - Just add flour and water bag)i think it said i couldn't work at another restraunt that served pizza.. not sure now, it was a long time ago.
IANALOOA
Here in Denmark, the law was changed to reflect that those non-competitive agreements becoming more and more normal.
So the law says, thay are not legal, unless the contract clearly states you will get half your salary for the binding period (up to 2 years). This is to compensate for a lower paying job. The former employee will not have to pay in full if you get a job at your former income.
Well, they didn't find a place for him, so he accepted at Colgate. Then P&G threatens to sue my brother if he goes to Colgate. He signed a NDA agreement when he did the project for P&G, but he *never* signed a non-compete agreement. If he had gone to court over this, he may or may not have won, but the threat alone was sufficient for Colgate to rescind their offer, for fear that they would later be sued by P&G.
All of this for a measly INTERN!
If "they" want to stop you from working somewhere, they can, whether or not they're in the right.
"My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulfate hair."
That way nobody can accuse me of carrying secrets with me when I leave. I suggest you all do the same too.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Western Digital is head quartered in California and these kinds of non-competes are not enforcable in California.
I believe (strongly, as a Libertarian) that any contract between two people that does not harm anyone else should be valid (perhaps with some extreme fringe cases) and that one of our governments *proper* role is to enforce and protect these contracts.
Having said that, next time someone asks you to sign this kind of non-compete, negotiate, ask to add a clause that if the company wants to enforce the non-compete at the termination of employment, they must pay your salary at the time of termination for the duration of the non-compete. It seems only fair.
I was such a bad employee that my ex-employer forced me to work for their competitor.
Seagate only needs to pay him up front the two years salary Western digital was promising him and he can then stay at home and do nothing.
Otherwise, he should go work for the competitor, anything else bars him from earning a living in his field of expertise for two years, and it CANNOT be legal to make someone either starve or work in a field they don't want to work in. No contract can be made that damages an individual right like that, it's unconstituional.
Simple, really.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I haven't been able to find the particulars, but I remember from grad school that the decision actually invokes the 13th amendment.
____________________________________
-- I beleve you'll like this -->
As much as I don't think so it is nothing more or less evil then companies patenting every single thought their employees come up with.
Of course it is. It is a well established legal truth that what you do on company time is property of the company. This *includes* any ideas you come up with on company time.
Now of course this is difficult to impossible to enforce (if I patent an invention then how does the company know if I came up with it at night or during the daytime?), which is why most companies nowadays include in their employment agreement the stipulation that any inventions created while you are under the employ of the company, period, are property of the company.
However, it is important to remember that the person responsible for hiring you is usually more flexable than you think in this regard - if you highlight the terms you have problems with you can likely have them changed before you sign - I have done this in both my last two jobs without issue. If they want you for the job, they will bed a little, otherwise, you probably don't want to work there anyways since you'd be treated as nothing more than a cog in the machine.
The simple fact of the matter is, you signed the agreement. If you did not agree with its terms at the time then you should not have signed it. I have no sympathy for anyone who signs things without reading them, it is just idiodic.
I signed my first non-compete when I started working for a small interactive firm back in January. Small = I'm one of 3 full-time employees.
I had been working in academia for 5+ years out of college, and I'd never had to sign one. When I read this one, I was like, "Damn -- I can't get a job somewhere else if this place sucks."
Honestly, I think NDAs or non-competes are valid for enterprises like Seagate who have to protect their intellectual properties and technologies. However, for a small shops like mine, I just see it as a bit of overkill.
I'm betting the CEO/founder of my company pissed off some designers/developers along the way who took what he thought were really innovative ideas over to better run shops. Hence the non-compete. But honestly, if I need to find a job in a market that's very small and oversaturated with talent, why make it difficult? Stealing clients is one thing, and re-using your last interactive firm's code is another, but being specifically denied the right to work for a direct competitor where you may do the same shit but for different clients?
Like I said -- for a small firm, a little overkill, particularly since any asshat (like me) with a few certifications and previous experience can most likely do anything your little company might have thought of on his/her own. It's not like creativity is unique to your firm.
Sigh -- and I'm looking for new work too. Makes me worry what I'll be allowed and NOT allowed to do in my new job.
My 2 cents. Don't spend 'em all in one place.
IronChefMorimoto
I belive a non-compete clause, such as ones alluded to here, exist in a number of industries. Speaking as a physician and member of the medical community, most of our contracts have non-compete clauses that state, in effect, "Upon leaving The Practice, you will not practice within your specialty in a similar hospital/clinic located within 5 miles of any of The Practice's locations". Of course, in this field it's so as not to "steal" patients (and therefor business) rather than technology.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
After having 3 Seagate drives flake out in the past 2 weeks, the problem is that he knows what NOT to do in their design and manufacture.
Even if he signed a non disclosure agreement, by enrolling to work under a competitor, he's not necessarily revealing any secret information about the previous company is he? So that means that if I write the core for Windows XP, then I could never work for any other company that wrote operating systems because there existed a possibilty that I could reveal secrets, specially if the company that was employing me was, TransGaming? or RedHat?
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
The guy is the head of the recording head department? What other industry do they expect him to find employment in?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Duh!
In the UK such contractual clauses are explicitly null and void: it's called restraint of trade
You are completely and utterly wrong. The circumstances in the UK are similar to most of the rest of the western modern world: appropriately scoped non-compete agreements are allowable and enforceable. What "appropriatley scoped" means all depends upon the circumstances and nature of the work, but for R&D employees working on new technologies, 12 months is not uncommon.
Back in those days, Borland went after Microsoft, not the little guy.
Is this a differce in the times, or are the specifics of the situations different?
How can he get ahead if they don't let him seek a new position in this sector? If not, I hope he's able to stay on track and spin up at the new job.
Sorry
Just another day in Paradise
A quick googling produces this link. Good site to check before moving.
Seriously folks, who has the right to prevent you from working anywhere because of what you _might_ do? If he gives away trade secrets, _then_ go after him! Sheesh!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Why is Seagate bothing anyway? It's not like they have any real leg-up on WD anyway. Everyone knows Seagate is WD's and Maxtor's bitch anyway. It's highly unlikely that a Seagate employee would know more about hard drives than WD.
That's pretty much on the money if you ask me.
I guess they just don't trust that someone like him won't go ahead and use the technology anyways, with small modifications so that you can't enforce a patent. But really, all WD has to do is just open up a Seagate drive and take a fucking look if they want the tech that bad.
Maybe he left Seagate on bad terms, and his old bosses are just trying to give him shit. It's happened before.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
The parent's article points out two facts glazed over in the original one: 1) He did sign an NDA and 2) Seagate isn't try to keep him from working at WD altogether, just certain divisions.
I think it's fairly reasonable for Seagate to ask that he not work in the same division at another company that he just left at Seagate. I still can't tell from the article if he signed a non-compete clause. Also, when I signed my non-compete with Seagate, the term on it was 1 yr. (of course, I was just a lowly intern, so I don't think they would have cared one way or another)
The actual statement wants to keep him from working in certain departments, not keep him out of the company, nor out of heads in general.
Boy we have a lot of lawyers on Slashdot today!
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FXS/is _4_82/ai_99986389
I think this case applies here
to shove it. Basically I went through the whole contract and crossed out all the instances of the word indirect as it referred to competition. I mean really that just sounded to me like: You have a fruit stand going and you only sell apples. I set up a fruit stand nearby and I only sell oranges. Your business starts delining so you sue me. I don't think so. And they tried telling me 'All the big companies have these, they are standard just like Microsoft'. LOL Yeah.. Like that is gonna convince me. Argh. These companies only want idiotic employees, and it appears they have, in many instances, gotten thier wishes. The really galling part was this was merely a tech support job for a company that made a living producing VBX plugins.
OTOH since I didn't sign eventually a friend I'd gotten hired at thier fulfillment house took the job and he still works there to this day. He's fat and happy and just about to graduate college, and I'm homeless. The price we pay for our principles can be stiff. Nevertheless if more people would question these BS NDAs that offer all the advantages to an employer and no compensation to an employee, and people keep saying shit like 'Thats just how it is, and you can't fight a big corp' it is NEVER gonna change. You have given up before you even fought the first battle. If a company really respects and values you as a potential employee they will back down on that NDA BS I bet. Just let a few people they really need demand full wages for the term to the NDAs prevention against them for finding other employment.
Lastly, I think it would have been much more responsible of them in light of this quote - "This particular employee, who has been here for a very long time, has extensive knowledge of proprietary and confidential information," said Brian Ziel, a Seagate spokesman. "We believe he will inevitably disclose some of that proprietary information that he has gained through working at Seagate." - to at least give the guy benefit of the doubt. I mean, if in fact thier worst fears become realized they'll be entitled to sue for WAY MORE money.
Bottom Line for me: I'll NEVER buy Seagate products again. I hope some will join me in protest.
-taosk8r
Yes that's what non-compete clauses are for, to protect one's clientele. They're not there to protect one's trade secrets from competitors, as so many here to mistakenly believe.
PHB:[Hands paper to Wally] Here sign this.
Wally: What's this?
PHB: It's a non-compete agreement. By signing, you agree not to do any work for a competitor for 5 years if you leave the company.
Wally: No problem.
[PHB leaves]
Wally: [Thinking] I haven't done any work here in the last five years.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
He's been there for 17 years. Non-competes weren't trendy back then, and if he was under one, it would have been mentioned. It also wouldn't be newsworthy. He is, however, under NDA. The argument that Seagate is trying to make is that it is impossible for him to honor the NDA if he takes the job. Now that we actually do have companies requiring employees to sign non-competes, the stark comparison is going to make Seagate look really weak here. In order to be valid, a contract must represent a "meeting of the minds". This means that both sides have to understand what they're getting into, or if they don't, it's because someone screwed up in the reading of it, rather than someone deliberately writing a confusing contract. It's pretty easy to argue that Pete Goglia could not reasonably have been expected to understand that the NDA was implicitly a non-compete. The bigger danger is really on Western Digital's end, as this opens them up to potential litigation for misappropriation of trade secrets for anything they come out with in the near future, regardless of whether or not any trade secrets were in fact misappropriated.
I don't know what was like for him there, but I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess that all of this probably could have been avoided if Seagate had given him a raise, better benefits, and perhaps more respect around the office. Courts have a tendency of drawing the same conclusion, and don't really like attempts like this to keep employees from taking jobs with competitors. They'll uphold an explicit and unambiguous non-compete, but I'd be absolutely astonished if they go for this legal theory.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
We hire folks from competitors who are under non-competes from thier previous employer fairly often (ASIC industry.) The contracts tend to stipulate that the emplyee can't take a similar position in a competing firm for X years.
So, if he/she was an engineer, we hire him/her as a "Marketer" and keep that title until the non-compete expires. Nevermind they might be doing some engineering while serving as a marketer. Good luck to the ex-employer in finding out exactly what they're doing at the new company.
Never heard of anyone having a problem with this plan.
Oh, and in CA (and other Right To Work states) non-competes are right out. Void. Unenforceable.
everything in moderation
Hitman: $5000
bullet: $1.50
Seagate corporate secrets protected: Priceless.
The took BOTH companies to a 3rd party which compared them. It turns out he only "copied" two things: 1) incoming faxes went into the "Fax Folder" in both products and 2) both products used structured programming constructs.
On the other hand, he was put in management for 2 years as part of the settlement.
These are not legal in California. He can work wherever he wants regardless of non-competes. Essentially, it is recognized in California that if he is that critical or his knowledge that thorough then he is probably one of the inventors / principals and the company that is so concerned has probably been profiting off of him rather than the reverse.
I am very much against this form of employment terrorism.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
What's ironic is Seagate is crying foul about this when they have been on the other side of court for this issue. Back in the 90's I was told a story from a seagate employee who had been present for one of the famious Alan Shugart (then CEO) lunch room chats. Alan liked talking to the rank and file casually.
Apparently back in the mid-late 90's seagate was getting their butts kicks in price because of IP. They were paying companies like Hutchingson Technologies to make parts because they lacked the internal IP and expertise. This outsourcing was costing them money. So they hired engineers from a competing company, IBM. This gave seagate a nice edge... until IBM sued. That basically created another drain on the company that negated any cost savings they had found.
After that I'm told Alan Shugart said "this time around we hired the right engineers." I would assume they covered their bases by hiring a broad range of engineers, or going overseas where it's much harder to sue a US company.
At any rate the defendant would do well to look up Seagates own cases. I'm guessing he can defend himself with their own words.
is the industry term. Pay a person so much that they won't leave. If they want to keep him and his knowledge, pay whatever it takes (if he's a problem employee, there are other ways to deal; i get the feeling he wasn't though). If they want to keep his knowledge of what he worked on whilst at the old job, should have gone NDA (non disclosure agreement) on him (i know you know this, just being complete).
Several of my proff's stayed in industry a bit longer than even they admit they should have with some companies due the insane amount of money keeping them there.
Plain and simple, have the NDA's for guys like this, pay them what they are worth (more if needed to keep them in the fold), and remember that if he's that good, he'll find other ways to make "must have" tech for harddrives, etc.
Second that. In a similar vein, my contract (I work as an R&D consultant) says I'm not allowed to work for any of our clients for 12 months - to stop them poaching me I guess.
"Mr. Goglia, by mandate of the Minnesota State Precrime Division, I'm placing you under arrest for the future theft of trade secrets from Seagate Technology LLC that was to take place on Dec. 1, 2004, when Western Digital was to release its new super-high-capacity hard drives."
These exist on the very fringe of legal contract law.
So what? If they do, then no contract means anything.
Nobody's forced anyone to do anything here. Even if the contract is "invalid" in today's loopy society, the fact remains that this guy did make a promise, and now he wants to break it now that circumstances have changed.
I wonder what the common reaction would be if it were Seagate violating their word instead of this schmo? What if circumstances changed and they adjusted his salary accordingly, or violated an agreed-upon tenure to outsource to [x 3rd-world country]?
Instead of furiously seeking precedents to support your emotionalist reaction to this guy's plight, maybe you could first stop to consider whether it is right or wrong to break one's written word... and then extrapolate from there as to whether this gent's actions should be illegal.
I'm a Remedy Developer, worst non-compete I've seen a Body Shop staffing firm, wanted me to sign one that said I wouldnt work within a 50 mile radius of Columbus, OH for 3 years. I laughed as I signed it, yeah like that would hold up in court. 99% of the time Non-competes are a scare tactic.
Anyone know if a non-compete can stick in CT and NY? The area is technology in the area of finance.
of course, people really prefer to stick with their doctor once they find one they like, and will gladly drive 5+ miles to continue being a patient
About 10 years ago I interviewed with a company in the DC area that was working with some NASA content. They gave me an 11 page contract. I'm not sure, but I can't imagine it was driven by their NASA contracts. The only thing I can figure is that it was originally used for some top security agency or something.
Now without even taking it to a lawyer, I absolutely refused to sign a half dozen clauses, and wouldn't sign another half dozen without making some modifications to them.
BUT, the real prize was that in addition to this contract, they wanted me to write a letter on my own letterhead. The letter had to give them permission to show up at any time and search my house, apartment, or anyplace I spend much time (such as a girlfriends house) and search to their hearts content for any of their proprietary information. It would be in effect for seven years from the time I left the company. Man that one really took the cake. Needless to say, I didn't end up working there.
I think I still have the contract. It might make for some interesting dialogue on slashdot if I could get it posted.
Something like quitting and moving straight to a client the next day *might*..
But a 2 year moratorium? Nah.. even 6 months would be stuck down in court..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Jesus, I hope you don't write documentation. If you do, someone's going to end up power-tooling their arms off.
If they don't want to employee him for the next two years in a manner or salary that is equitable then darn them to heck and let him seek employment elsewhere without their meddling, Dang it all!
Else they should give him a two year paid vacation and be done with it.
Look at it as an investment in their market position.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
bullshit, just cos your contract says so don't make it so. Most UK companies give gardening leave to get round this because they know a legal battle would hurt them.
Non-competes are enforcable in Oregon, even if they fire or lay you off.
Who have I missed?
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Even with a noncompete, they are often unenforcable.
And even without a noncompete agreement written the principals may still apply: "Even though Bill Redmond had no non-compete with Pepsico, for example, an Illinois federal court enjoined him for five months from performing particular kinds of work for the Gatorade/Snapple division of Quaker Oats. ...
As the court said in Pepsico, in certain cases, for the employee to function in the new position without using secrets learned in the old, "he would have to have an uncanny ability to compartmentalize information;" otherwise "he would necessarily be making decisions about [the new company's products] by relying on his knowledge of [the former company's] secrets. n4 Use or disclosure of secrets in such cases is "inevitable." "
...of trying to steal intellectual property this way? Lawsuits can suck up more money than research, and unless you can show some way that Western Digital can steal Seagate's property without it being apparent in the final product, the chance it will do so is pretty remote.
Basically, Seagate is trying to improve retention in the short term by making other employment less attractive. The downside to this of course is that down the road people will prefer to work for employers that don't keep them in shackles in the basement (metaphorically speaking).
why in the hell would WD even think about using Seagate technology...seagate sucks ass...
So if the disclosure of at least some prior knowledge from your experience in the past job is inevitable, why not treat is as simply a fact of business that can't be helped. The employee is not the one that should be punished for this... if you are trained in a certain field, not being able to be employed in that field for two whole years is practically a death sentence for most families.
Anyone got a nice wikipedia link or something to HowHardDrivesWork? Magnets, yeah, great, but ...?
If the next company that hires you is foolish enough to fabricate a product that too closely resembles patented, copyrighted, or trademarked items from your prior company, they will simply have to resolve it through various legal means. Those companies that rely of "trade secret" rules fear this sort of thing as they have little protection against the migration of knowledge from one company to another.
Everyone has the right to work, and it is not likely that any jury would see stopping a citizen from working as a viable solution. And, if they did, the Supreme Court sure wouldn't as it clearly wouldn't stand a test against the Constitution.
= 9J =
Yes, if a company can essentially black-list you from an entire industry I'd say that would indicate they 'own' either you or they own all the other companies in the industry and therefore have direct control over them. Surely neither of these concepts could withstand reasoned scrutiny in court?
The only other alternative is not a real one: that they 'own' what's in your head as if that were an actual physical thing which you could give back to them when leaving.
gee, then maybe they should've have made him an ex-employee if he's so valueable to the viability of their products.
just because he's working for another company doesn't mean that he's going to use the same knowledge to help that company. it's quite possible that he doesn't even remember specifics, and that the knowledge he used to design seagates stuff is still resident - ie, it would essentially be an independent implimentation.
I know hardware is quite different, but I personally can't remember what code I wrote 6 months ago looks like, let alone anything beyond that. Might my impimentation look the same now? I doubt it.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Really? Thats interesting.
I wonder... The company I work for here in Canada had me sign an agreement when I was hired that basically said that if I came up with any brilliant, million-dollar ideas related to the industry for two years (IIRC) after I left the company, they'd basically "own" those ideas. I thought it was kind of strange to try and claim someone elses "IP" like that, and wondered to myself if they had ever tried to enforce it. Anyone know? I sincerely doubt its ever happened, since the company is primarilly shipping and logistics... not a whole hell of a lot of room to drastically innovate, unless you happen to invent a teleporter or something... but now i'm curious if these kinds of agreements are legal in Canada too, seeing as how the competition-employment ones are (apparently) not.
Quick! Where's a 'IAAL' on Slashdot when you need one!? (Oh, wait...)
They want to prevent it from happening in the first place. It's easier to stop this one employee from working for the competitor than it is for them to stop Western Digital from selling hundreds of thousands of hard drives a couple years later.
My other first post is car post.
Hmmm, in this part of the western world (New Zealand) it appears that the employment court starts from the position that they are invalid, but then looks to see if some constraint is justified...
http://www.howtolaw.co.nz/html/ml126.asp
Which sounds rather similar to the other situations cited here.
In Los Angeles, there are doctors offices all over the place, and they're usually associated with UCLA Medical Group. They're peppered all over the city, so I imagine that if a doctor left UCLA Medical Group, he'd have to leave the city or go into a different specialty.
My other first post is car post.
Conversations generally go like this "well, this is under NDA but since I have to conform to our TDA, here's the info..."
We did this because of all the utterly stupid NDA's we've had to sign over the years.
This all just shows how silly IP-laws really are.
Once upon a time, sharing was considered a source of wealth for all.
Now you get hunted down by lawyer-sharks in the water.
Something must change soon..
Companies put in non-competes all the time, but they're unenforcable. The best they can do is scare off other pimps from repping you, but real corporations (that each pimp would sell his mother to be able to place bodies there) can tell the little pimps to slag off or forget about ever placing anyone there.
So, no matter what you sign in TX (or any other right to work state), you are able to work whereever you want. That doesn't mean they can't drop a 'suit own you to make your life a living hell, but they'd probably only do in extreme cases. They know they couldn't win if it ever went to trial, so they're betting you'll fold like the spineless wimp you are.
Yeah, right.
This is a lot more complicated then what is visible on the surface.
Of course, whether there was a clause in the initial contract between the employee and Seagate about non-complete makes a big difference. Then again, some can argue about the legalities of such clauses even if it is there - which may then depend on the specific state as well.
Even if Seagate agrees to pay the employee for the two years what he would have earned otherwise - there is an opportunity cost that will not be paid. The opportunity cost is what the employee would have learned in the two years in the industry and improved his skill sets and how that will factor in the compensation for the rest of his career.
On the other hand, if he is allowed to work at Western Digital and even if he does not divulge any "Top Secret" Seagate information - the fact that he knows that information is sufficient enough for Seagate to worry. He may know very critical business information such as Seagate's complete roadmap for the next few years, their pricing structure, the new and exciting technologies that they may be bringing to market etc. Now even if he doesn't give this information away to western digital, there is nothing stopping him from using that information while making critical business decision at Western Digital. To give an example, if he is in charge of coming up with what features in what different products should be and when they should come to market - he can make excellent decisions by utilizing his prior knowledge of seagate products even without explicitly telling western digital anything. This is exactly what Seagate wants to avoid. It is very difficult/impossible to enforce a person to make decisions while enforcing that he does not use all the data that is stored in his mind.
This is the exact scenario that Seagate does not want. Imagine that for every product Seagate launches, Western digital comes with a better product with same (or better) feature-sets at 5% the Seagate's price one week ago. This would kill Seagate.
Osho
Disclaimer: I do not work or either Seagate or Western Digital or even in the hard drive industry. But such concerns are ubiquitous across all different industries.
A contract cannot be "Constitutional" or "unconstitutional," as the very notion of being unconstitutional applies to laws, not to contracts.
working as a contractor / detachee / consultant (or whatever you call it) this is a clause that I see in all my contracts. problem for the companies is that, in Belgium, or Europe for that matter, it is only enforcable when the employer or client keeps paying your wage. so : if they don't continue to pay your wage, even after you left the company, they have no argument.
You both are wrong. There is a decision from the European Court declaring such non competing clauses void because they are contradicting the free choice of the workplace as laid down in the European Contracts.
Of course you are not allowed to take trade secrets with you, and if someone can prove that you did, you are in deep trouble. There are lots of contracts with non competing clauses in Europe. But the fact that the clauses are there doesn't make them enforceable throughout the European Union.
(There is another argument why those clauses are void: As soon as your contract ends, all clauses within the contract end too. All your former company has to enforce certain things to you are laid down in law, not in contract.)
What you on about? The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that anyone in the European Union can work anyway, for anyone. No employer can put any extra restrictions on this. Sure, they do, but nobody takes it seriously - if it ended up at tribunal (which none do) it's generally believed the employee would win for obvious reasons.
then he and the courts should tell Seagate to go get bent... to do otherwise would be severe injustice.
If Seagate is too stupid to get contracts from the employees then they DESERVE to lose here.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Where its a tech advantage, my guess is that the courts would be more likely to enforce it - a great many of the cases deal with sales and customer lists and the fear a principal or sales person will leave and poach all the clients. In those cases, courts often say you can work for a competitor, just do it in a different area (and hence client pool). For tech, though, it doesn't matter how far away you move, the players all do business globally. I'm not sure how they'll deal with a tech knowledge issue, though I'm almost positive they'll enforce an NDA - and the new employer can potentially be liable if they induce him to breach it. Makes it a bit hard on the poor sap switching jobs, though - he'll "poison" any reverse engineering effort he touches and he can't use anything covered by the NDA - hope the new employer has some VERY different technology ideas.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
has the whole fcking world gone mad? employers are trying to extend their grasp beyond the time you work for them now? all i can say is if i found a clause like this in a contract i was offered my response would be - great boss, since your stopping me from being able to live, i will be staying at your house and eating your food for 2 years. put it in personal terms like that and it quickly shows itself to be a total load of crap.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Not exactly a products "industry" but the major example I've read about is during the sale of a business.
One particularly memorable example was the case of a small hair-dressing salon in a medium-sized city. The owner decided to put the business up for sale, and the buyer (wisely) decided to see a lawyer, who helped draft the sales contract.
The old owner almost signed the contract but apparently had a major issue with the "you will not open a similar business within x kilometers for y years" clause. She complained it was unfair and fought it but eventually decided not to sell. (at least to the original buyer)
Reason? The owner planned on taking her best clients and start a part-time salon at her home.
There's nothing wrong with that EXCEPT that the business was more valuable with its "long time" clients. They may not necessarily stay with the company but there is a fair chance.
I'm not sure about the legality, but on the scales of fairness, a medium-term non-compete with obvious competitors in identical departments is relatively fair compared to the "we own your ass" style NCs.
IMHO, Seagate appears to have a good argument for even a low-level employee. An upper-level one is privy to far more sensitive information - I'd hate to have to deal with that situation.
If I was WD, the legality of hiring a competitors upper brass would give me nightmares for months. Still may be worth it though.
Somebody should tell that to Criterion, ST Microelectronics, and various others...
the covenant must be reasonable (e.g if a barber leaves a shop, with a covenant signed, it could be like he cant practice in the same town for the next year) but it cannot be of unreasonable time or of unreasonable geographic location... therefore, if western is in a diffrent area than seagate, he may be ok.
What sort of trade secret laws exist in the EU and how does this come into play?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This is so commonplace it's not even funny. In fact, under my current employment agreement, I have the normal "no new in two" for a competing business, but I also have a stipulation that says I cannot recruit any current employee for any business opportunity of my own during those two years. Nothing to see here...
Mr. Goglia should just outsource himself to India - plenty of job offers will then come his way, without all this complicated lawyerly stuff.
Here this kind of clause is agains the CLT (the group of laws regarding work relationships) and even the Constitution itself. I have a faint memory about someone trying to pull something like that here and it was invalidate because our constitution says the citizen can work on whatever he/she wants for starters.
Scientia est Potentia
Below is a snippet from an article the "Business Journal, Portland".
1 0/20/focus3.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2003/
It's a good article that explains how to write it so it is enforceable:
Guideline #2 below is seldom ever followed, and all 3 must hold true to be enforceable.
Non-compete agreements are fairly common in Oregon and recognized as a legitimate method of protecting an employer's confidential and proprietary information. But, state public policy generally discourages them because these contracts are restraints of trade. Non-competition agreements must:
1) Be reasonably necessary to protect a legitimate interest of the employer
2) Not impose an unreasonable hardship upon the person against whom they are asserted
3) And not be injurious to the public interest.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
One of the lead engineers accepted an offer from a competitor (BEA).
;-)
Former employer exercised the right to block him from taking this job -- basically the prohibition was he couldn't go to BEA for a year. As part of the clause, former employer also paid the employee a year's salary to NOT work for the competitor.
I wished I could have worked out the same sort of deal... a year's salary to NOT work
Whether this can be enforced is probably a grey area. Certainly this sort of stuff should be clearly spelled out in the documents you sign when you start the job.
I'm a consultant working for a company that specializes in Oracle. The contract that we were "encouraged" to sign (lest we seek employment elsewhere) states that:
(Slight difference in the two)
So, seeing as I've worked for this company for quite a while now, and have consulted at many if not all possible clients in the city, I'm essentially barred from working in this city for a year after I leave the company.
I've had my agreement looked over by a lawyer, and told that I'm pretty much f*cked. Well, maybe not that harsh, but basically he couldn't make any guarantees on any side based on the laws in Texas.
I guess I'll go answer that ad in the window at the corner Wendy's....
IANAL, but I thought that the ruling is California was that unless Company A (Seagate in this case) fairly compensates you for not practicing your trade for the duration of the non compete, then the non compete won't hold up in court preventing you from going to company B.
Simpler, Seagate has to have him under contract, and has to be compensating him for the duration of that contract as specified in the non compete. Otherwise, they can't stop him from practicing his trade unless they can PROVE that he is using Seagates IP at his new position.
California law seems to be better than Minnesota law in this particular area.
I changed jobs from one California company to one of its competitors. The first company tried to stop the second company from hiring me, citing the "doctrine of inevitable disclosure", which is the same issue mentioned in the article. My new employer's lawyers responded with a letter citing California law protecting freedom of workers to work where they will notwithstanding said doctrine. I don't know exactly what law they cited but the first employer backed down. (I may have a copy of the letter somewhere; I'll try to find it and post more details.)
What does it matter if he takes "trade secrets" to WD? Does anyone doubt that WD is able to reverse-engineer Seagate's drives? The reason why they can't copy them isn't that they don't know how they work, it's because Seagate holds the relevant patents (and the same is valid the other way around).
RMN
~~~
A cursory google would seem to indicate that Minnesota is one of the states that allow non-competes to be enforced. But all he really has to do is move to California or Texas (What do you suppose the odds are that WD could use him in one or the other or either?).
Both states forbid pretty much all non-competes. And the courts in both are fairly famous for telling out-of-staters to buzz off when they try to harass local workers over these sorts of things.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Lawyer: "I've looked at the agreement. You're pretty much fucked."
You: "Is the agreement that bad?"
Laywer: "The agreement? No. I'm talking about my fees."
RMN
~~~
The solution is really simple in most cases. Most non compete clauses are void if the employee is fired (for the obvious reason that an employeer can't fire an individual and then tell them they can't work elsewhere eiether). Just stop showing up for work and your set either way... On the one hand you get to work where you please, or you get paid for doing nothing :)
-IANAL
If changing our world is playing God, it is just one more way in which God made us in His image. -Aubrey de Grey
What you did was stupid. Yeh its good to have principles but you took it too far. If it says can't work for competitor, get it changed for "can't work for competitor in field _directly_ related to XYZ".
This will work great for a programmer, as its unlikely, however if your a neuclear physiscist its not so good, But if you that specialist you have _waaaaay_ more bargaining power and should be able to say "pay me for the time I can't work for a competitor". This is what Adrian Newey (Aerodynamist I think) had when he left Williams F1 for McLaren.
Non-competes are definitely enforceable in Oregon (having successfully enforced a few myself). There are some significant qualifications that might be unique to Oregon, the biggest of which is that the agreement must have been entered into simultaneous with initial employment or a bona fide promotion. Screwing this up by even a few days will render the non-compete unenforceable.
It looks like that is how it works in California. It's illegal (in California) for a company to enforce a non-compete agreement. But because of issues with the priority of various laws, a company can claim there are trade secret issues and that it is assumed that working for a competitor means you would reveal those secrets. It appears to be legal (and common) for companys to prevent you from working out of trade secret concerns.
Ethically I agree, people should not be forced into unemployement because of a corporation's paranoia. I like to think a vast majority of employees are professional and comply with reasonable NDAs. The only other reason is because competitors just want to screw one another and the employee isn't even the issue. He's just a pawn that can be used to attack another company.
I recommend this very good article that has been written on this exact topic. It cleared up a lot of things for me. It also makes me suspect that I already need a lawyer because I have signed these non-compete agreements before, and I've been in the same industry for the past few jobs.
I never had access to trade secrets at the most evil of the places I've worked at, but who knows. They might just try to use me for a scapegoat or something.
In other states (on the east coast and midwest for example). The non-compete clauses are standard boiler plate that is part of any company's contract. And in a majority of states they are quite legal and readily enforced. California has the most unusual laws when you compare it to other states in the union.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Because in 17 years or however long it is now, their technology will be obsolete anyways -- I see no reasonable reason to protect it as a trade secret.
This is just an unacceptable practice. If you don't like it, just don't ever buy any Seagate products. Slashdot it pretty big, and the HD industry is fiercly competitive. How much business can you stand to lose over this Seagate?
AccountKiller
If you can't do teach!
Seriously, what is preventing this persion from working as an adjunct professor at a university sharing his wealth of knowledge?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Contracts say all sorts of bullshit.
I've got into the habit of 'correcting' any contracts I get before signing. Typically the employer countersigns without even reading my corrections. Their loss.
My last one tried to stop me working:
1. For any suppliers (so mcdonalds is out!)
2. For any clients
3. For any company in related (ie. computing) work
4. For any company *at all* for 6 months after leaving the company.
It also said *any* innovation, work related or not, was property of the company even if I came up with it in at the weekend.
Even though it's highly likely it was unenforcable (restraint of trade and all that... despite what some posters have implied these kind of contracts get voided all the time) I crossed out the offending paragraphs before sending it back. Never heard a whimper out of them.
(Their latest trick was to get us to sign a contract giving the unlimited power of attourney. I crossed *that* out about 5 seconds after getting the agreement.)
This is what bothers me - how does Seagate know where he's been applying? How much spying is a corporation allowed to do to enforce the non-compete?
And what if they were wrong? What if the guy signed on to work in the cafeteria? What if a year later he gets 'promoted' to Lead Drive Spin Tech? How far can a company like this go?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
In Canada, "you'll never work in this town again" is a threat like assault. Just making it in the midst of any labor negotiation can demonstrate "bad faith" by the threatener in the negotiation, and default judgement by a court in favor of the threatened. At least in Ontario, where people work :).
--
make install -not war
> Who have I missed?
Monsanto and the Nigerian Government
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Media Relations Contact:
Brian Ziel (831.439.5429)
brian.ziel@seagate.com
Seriously, why was this story reported on a Mac web site? If Mr. Goglia is a Mac programmer, perhaps the real reason he can't get a job is that he only knows a proprietary niche programming language (Objective-C) and a proprietary niche API (Cocoa/Carbon, etc.)
Best Buy can have you arrested
Unfortunately, the article doesn't go into too much depth about the situation. Whether he was fired, laid off, or left on his own for greener pastures. But here are my thoughts on it all:
Non-compete clauses are standard in the broadcast world, and a local radio station made a big stink about it on the air because a popular couple had been fired from their morning show, and the radio station that picked them up couldn't let them on the air for 6 months or face a lawsuit from the station that fired them in the first place! However, there are hundreds of markets in the US, and stations that are always looking for better talent, so there wasn't much threat of them going hungry - they could just move 50 miles to the next radio market and get a job if they were hard up for cash.
On the other hand, if what you do is highly specialized work, such as working on the read/write heads of hard drives, there aren't that many job opportunities available to you. So if there are only 3 companies that do what you specialize in, and you leave one to work at another, you are going to be in trouble if you are forced to take a 2 year hiatus. However, I wouldn't have a problem staying out of the field for 2 years if my first company compensated me for staying out of my chosen profession for the duration of time.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
"... the courts will propably enforce a noncompete clause even if you didn't sign any."
With respect - do you come from some strange alternate reality? This is not in consonance with the reality I inhabit. Pardon me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. The court enforce a contract that was never entered into? That would truly be a grotesque conceit on the part of the court.
He works outside the U.S. for Western Digital? In practice, is he still liable for the work he does outside of U.S. jurisdiction?
"Such [non-compete] clauses are VERY Anti-American. They give the employer TOTAL power over the employee and violate the spirit of capitalism. Indeed, noncompetes are in many ways a SOCIALIST idea..."
Well, they are a dark ages idea, a hangover of serfdom, but I think may be better characterized as a feature of corporatist hegemony rather than socialism.
also known as a "corporation" or a "borg".
The lives of mere humans must be sacrificed and made to conform to the needs of corporations, entities which must exist, now and forever more, unto eternity.
No human can be allowed to perform in ways that threaten corporate entities since they, and not mere individual behaviors, are the ultimate expression of freedom.
I was planning to buy a seagate drive this week. Now I won't. I also fired off an email telling Seagate why it will be awhile before I buy their stuff again. I actively try to punish companies that I think misbehave, although I think I am often unaware of the misbehavior of a given company and in some industries no company is particularly nice. So am I alone in thinking: "hey 2 years is too long. I think I'll buy Western Digital instead." or do other slashdotters make commerce choices based on political/legal opinions?
"they aren't trying to prevent him from working at Western Digital, just the read/write head division of WD."
:-) So (better yet to your idea) they just hire him for the HR or PR division and he fills in a little over at the read/write head division (from his own desk at HR or PR of course) in his spare time.
Oh, that would work real good
As long as they make him sign a non-disclosure agreement or something similar before he leaves, there's no problem as I see it. Then they can sue his ass if he squeals. Other than that, so what if he can't work for a rival for 2 years? If he's got enough experience and knowledge in the field that he poses a threat to his former company, he shouldn't have any trouble finding work elsewhere.
It is at times like this that I am glad I have enough specializations in my major that I would hopefully be able to avoid this in the future. While digital design is by far my largest specialization, I have taken enough courses in other specialities that I don't get stuck working in one sector.
I do think these types of clauses are not good for the individuals but to some degree are necessary to keep business fair otherwise you would see a lot of "dirty" tricks by companies to pull away top design engineers from each other. Two years in the computer industry though is a bit ridiculous. I mean almost everything in my PC was obsolete within 2 minutes of coming out of the packaging, the tech grows so fast that anything over a year is harsh.
----
"The same thing we do every night Pinky; Try to take over the world."
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
2 years is enough to patent all your technology, the sun and the moon and everything else in between...
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
If he lives in a "Right to Work" state, then Seagate has no suit. In so-called RtW states, companies cannot prevent any worker from obtaining employment in their trained profession.
I believe the office he would have been working at is in the Boulder area in Colorado. I don't know if CO is a Right-to-Work state, but are there any CO residents who care to chime in?
I once worked for a video game developer, some twenty years ago. Some months after I was hired I was told that I had to "sign a few standard forms" that were overlooked during the initial hiring process. It turned out that what they wanted me to sign was a rather Draconian non-compete with a five-year period in which I couldn't work in the video game industry, and that anything I might develop during that period regardless of its relevance to the game industry belonged to them. I point-blank refused to sign it. I was told that all the other programmers had so I had to as well. I said "So what?" I was told that they couldn't hire engineers who don't sign it. In something of a state of disbelief, I replied that I had been hired, and that no such condition was ever mentioned until now. Furthermore, if it was a condition of my continued employment I would pack my things right then and there. The issue was dropped a few days later. Probably they could have used your advice on appropriate scoping.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
My dad retired from Pitney Bowes as a service tech. PB payed plenty to send him to various schools to learn how to do just about anything to just about all of their equipment. He was under a non-compete for 2 years.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
US law also seems to limit non-competes. One law firm has listed all sorts of complications, including the need for the employer to provide additional "consideration" (ie. money) if a non-compete is provided.
-- SYS 64738 --
I never signed the contracts. The president flipped. He threatened to contact the university where I was finishing my Executive MBA and have me expelled.
After I quit, a young engineer also quit and he pulled the same stunt with her. In her case, he threatened to have her blocked from ever doing a masters, since he "knew people" at the local universities. I told her he was full of hot air and that he could not force her to sign backward- (or forward-!) looking contracts. She stuck to her guns, although it took over a month for her to get her last paycheque.
The funny thing was that non-competes are rarely enforceable in Canada and the guy had no competitors in Canada. It's extremely unlikely that the engineer or I would ever work for one of his competitors, anyway!
-- SYS 64738 --
You are completely and utterly wrong.
Well that's new on Slashdot...
So long as they're willing to pay you for not working for anyone they don't want you to, I don't see a problem with it.
I figure non-competes should be worded as such:
Anytime the company wants to prevent you from working for someone else, they must continue to pay you the average of your last three full month's salary for as long as they want you prohibited from working.
When they stop paying, you are no longer restricted from working wherever you want.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
That doesn't mean that such clauses are not legally enforceable in Canada, or in the UK. There's a solid foundation of case law supporting the validity of non-competition clauses in both countries. Put very simply, the restrictions must be for a reasonably limited time, and must restrict using the specific knowledge gained from the former employer, but typically not restrict a person from using their general expertise in the area of research/development.
These contracts are legal, I believe, if and only if there is consideration for the signee. This would mean you would have to recieve compensation, or something, in exchange for you not working. So if Seagate was willing to pay him a fair amount - likely his standard wages, or the difference between what he made there and a non-competing firm - then a judge in Canada would find this reasonable.
As a rider on a standard employment contract, based on what I know about contract law, any judge would interpret there to be no consideration for the signee making the contract void. Canadian judges tend to be sane and reasonable, for the most part.
I'm not a lawyer, of course, and this is a layman's interpretation from a text.
..don't panic
They aren't preventing him from making a living. He just can't work in a very specific part of a competing firm. They aren't going to force him to work at McDonalds or anything.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Moving wouldn't change anything since he was employed in MN and Seagate's suit was filed in a MN court.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
If they guy has been with them for 17 years then seagate must have not paid this guy enough for him to stick around. If this guy has been around this long and has all these trade secrets then it is some ones job at Seagate to keep this person fat, dumb and happy with his job. Since most jobs now are no like they were decades ago were a company would take care of its employees than these companies should expect the shoe fits on the other foot just as well.
I hope Pete gets to work at Western Digital very soon. I think Western Digital is one of the best companies out there as far as customer support is concerned. I had a bad 100gig drive that was about 6 month old and they replaced it with a 120gig drive. Not only that when I had further problem they shipped a second 120gig drive and told me to check them both out and return the extra 120gig drive in a couple of weeks when I was sure which one I would like to keep....all without a dime out of my pocket.
They have my business for life now.
Non-competes are understandable if you're very, uhh, "important". Such as the lead developer, chief scientist on major research, etc, etc, but really, if you're of that calibur you wouldn't (or shouldn't) sign something like that without an understanding that you will be compensated highly even after your departure, to make up for your inability to work for the period of non competition.
Most employers do NOT offer any such compensation of course, and thus they can't really enforce their own non-compete because it would be robbing the employee of their livelihood.
Companies unfairly include such clauses with the idea that if you don't like it, you don't get the job.
Assuming Seagate has proprietary code or apparatus in it's harddrive, shouldn't Seagate have patents and copyrights that cover these inventions? If an ex-employee were to infringe on these patents and copyrights then Seagate could claim and injury and sue?
How much protection do large monolithic companies need? Usually corporations treat workers as-if they are insignificant, until they decide to leave. Not only do they want to own the thoughts of the employee, but also control where the employee works next. Somebody save us before we have to change our lastname to that of our employer as a condition of employment. Geeez.
Here's one: don't sign a contract at all. I've been "on contract" at the largest bank in canada since '98 without ever having signed a single document. If they are really interested in your kung-fu, they won't bother trying to pin you to the mat. They still pay me my contract wage and they don't even flinch when I show up in sandals.
This doesn't sound like it's about non-compete clauses or contracts. (Admittedly, I've only read the linked-to MacCentral article and haven't done any other digging for details, so it very well could be.) I would guess Seagate is trying to protect its trade secrets wrt read/write technology related to their Recording Head Operation.
The Seagate spokesperson used the magic words "inevitably disclose", which probably refers to "inevitable disclosure" doctrine in trade secret law. This is a very fact-based doctrine, but it comes up when the employee has deep knowledge of the business/technology of the old employer, and the nature of the new job would lead "inevitably" to disclosure (verbal or otherwise) of that knowledge. Many states follow this doctrine (though I don't know if Minnesota does), and most of these would allow suing for injunctions to prevent "inevitable disclosure" of their trade secrets, which is what Seagate is probably doing. This is why it doesn't really matter if there was a non-compete or not.
You're homeless how would you buy a Seagate drive anyway?
In another news, McDonalds is seeking a court injuction to prevent one of its ex-employees from working at BurgerKing.
In the banking industry, in particular, the City, you are sent home on three months paid time, in which you may not work for anyone (it is paid). This gets over the non-compete issue. The time is usually referred to as Gardening leave.
In Belgium the law talks about a minimum thta can make it legal. This means that if you do not earn that amount and still sign the contract, you can still go to the competition and work there.
If you do not go and work for the competition, you can still claim the money. The money being your salary for that period, unless an amount was named in the contract.
Signing such a thing is a great for the employee, often not that good for the employer. I would LOVE to sign such an agreement as an emplyee.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
One good thing of European law is that there are a lot more "default cases" than there are in American law.
There is, for example a default non-compete rule for employees of barber shops. A former employer is not allowed to work within 100 meters (300 feet) from the old barber shop.
As previous posts have suggested, any non-compete in Europe should be limited in scope, region and time. The ones I've signed had a one-year limit in a small market segment.
It is actually quite common for people to get a paid 6-month vacation when moving between to competing companies. Then the latest trade secrets is 6 months old.
If your contract has a non-compete section you are working with the real thing.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Had they fired you for refusing to agree to additional terms that weren't in force when you joined the company, you could have made a tidy profit on a wrongful termination suit.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In the UK a swift 'FUCK OFF' normally sorts these situations out.
Old Company: You can't work for this new competing company!
UK resident: Fuck off.
Old Company: But...but...but...
UK resident: No buts. Just fuck off
Old Company: So, after leaving here who will you be working for?
UK resident: Fuck off.
Old Company: But...but...but...
UK resident: No buts. Just fuck off
Seriously, a swift 'fuck off' works magic. It doesn't have to be agressive either. Make eye contact; look like you have something important to say then let the words flow. 'Fuck off'.
Perhaps I should start an employment consulting company.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I trust for two years Seagate will compensate the loss of Pete's income including the rise he would get from WG. In the mean time, Pete could study and optionally change trade (in such a case I might turn into a chef de cuisine and I can recommend this to Pete).
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Anything worth protecting in a company, they'll patent. You know why? Because patents give you a 20 year unconditional monopoly, while "trade secrets" in a product you can just open up and copy are a toss anyway.
.gif roll-overs per page."
Trade secrets are valuable when you can actually keep them a secret. E.g., some secret stock picking algorithm that runs only on your computer, which isn't even talking directly to the web server. They just share a database server, past 5 firewalls and 2 armoured doors. Someone would have to actually break into the building (or bribe the sysadmin) to get to that.
But in a product which you ship and anyone can take apart and/or reverse engineer? Gimme a break. There's a reason why even software corporations want patents instead: because they're a far safer bet than pretending it's top secret.
The way Seagate's GMR heads work, is not only the same as everyone else's work, but you could just take the drive apart and find out for yourself anyway. The way their caching and TCQ algorithms work, you could just disassemble the firmware and see for yourself.
So IMHO Seagate is just having a knee-jerk reaction, whether they have anything to protect or not. They're just doing it because everyone else is doing it, not because someone sat down and analyzed what secrets they have to protect.
Same as we've seen during the dot-com scam. People made you sign NDAs to protect some super-secret plan like "umm... we're making a web site. With a forum. And... umm... yeah, I know, lots of Flash, bright colours and 1 meg of
Well, geee... surely noone else would have thought of that on their own. Noone except the other tens of thousands of equally clueless dot-coms, that is. And surely noone can get that idea by just seeing the bloody web page. They surely _have_ to steal your employees to figure that out.
Yet they made you sign tome sized NDAs. One I had in front of me wanted to prohibit me from ever competing not only with them, but also with their clients, or their clients' clients' clients. In any way. Taken literally, if they ever made some ad for a news site, I'd have been prohibited to ever blog, 'cause that would sorta be competing. If one of their clients was a detergents corporation, I'd have been quite literally prohibited from selling soap.
And, again, to protect what great trade secret? That they want to make a web site. With flash. And ads. Gee, that's so revolutionary, non-obvious and worth protecting.
So personally I'd very much like to see this idiotic cult of the NDA die already. My message to these employers would be: if you have something worth defending, get a patent already. If it wasn't worth patenting, go fsck yourself and get off my case already.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Which fact no doubt occurred to them. Doesn't mean they didn't try really hard to get me to sign on to those additional terms, though.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Disregarding the veracity of your report, the point you make is exactly why California courts refuse to enforce these clauses.
Your friend accepted the clause, and has a job.
You refused the clause, and presumably others like it at other employers, and can not get a job.
If one can not pick and choose employment restrictions, then the employment market is not sufficiently competitive to manage without regulations, hence employees need governmental protection from employers.
NOTE: The bottom line is not purchase decisions. I'll leave the real bottom line as an exercise for the reader.
Anybody on Slashdot who can't see the logic of your arguments is lost or dark in nature.
-FL
As far as I understand it... IF (and you'd be a right tool to do so) sign a SEPERATE contract of this nature then it is biding until whenever stated on the contract. IF this is part of your contract of employment (as nearly all are) then the contract is BROKEN when you leave the employ of that company as that is the tenure of such a contract.
None of this has EVER withstood a good trial and the few times employers have tried it (mostly in the City) it has failed. I suspect the EU Human Rights convention probably has a lot to say about it too.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I believe in the UK, they're not allowed to ban you from going to another company, but if you've given notice they can tell you not to come into work as long as they still pay you (gardening leave), for the duration of the notice period. You're still employed by them, so you can't go and work for anyone else.
If you paid attention, you would have been informed that in may states (U.S) and countries clauses like these in employment agreements are invalid.
In many cases, contracts like these have been rules null and void in courts.
The trick is to understand which ones, where, and why.
Anytime the company wants to prevent you from working for someone else, they must continue to pay you the average of your last three full month's salary for as long as they want you prohibited from working.
AIUI, that's the only kind of "non-compete" that is legal here in Norway. "We will pay you for a year, but you're not allowed to come to work or speak to company people in that time".
The idea being, after a year, whatever inside information you had is either public or worthless.
I'm a self-employed software development contractor. I own two registered limited companies which whilst having similar names are actually two completely separate legal entities. The contracts I sign are always between the client and my company, not with me personally. Therefore, those clauses mean jack since I can just use my other company for the next contract if there's any chance of a no-compete clause sticking.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
I disagree, they should pay you the salary for the new job you got and are not allowed to take.
Why'd you get rid of them/reject there pay rise?
Their latest trick was to get us to sign a contract giving the unlimited power of attourney. I crossed *that* out about 5 seconds after getting the agreement.
dude... I would seriously consider new employment if my employer (current or future) tried to slip that one past me. There has to be a certain degree of trust and respect between you and your employer. If you are the one lacking in trust/respect, then as an employer, I would release you from your job. there's not telling what you would do to the company and I wouldn't want to take the chance. On the flip side, if the company is lacking in trust/respect, then I would leave it. My guess is that they would not have any problem "screwing you over" when push came to shove.
With a contract like the one you described above, it seems your employer is lacking in resprect toward you. Run now before they have a chance to screw you!
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
I've done the same thing. In fact I had rewritten the entire agreement to include an array of bizarre demands. If only it were actually valid, seeing as to them signing without reading would not be 'consideration'.
If it were legal, I'd be the proud owner of BASF Canada.
Yeah, you'd be surprised what people don't read in contracts.
//i have as many lives as people i know.
Non-compete agreements with lawyers are verboten.
now, why would anyone want to actually take seagate technology to WD anyway? Wouldn't that be a step *BACK* for WD?
"The problem is these corporations are made up of people. These people tend to be selfish, overbearing individuals who care for nothing more than short term profits and purchasing their 4th Mercedes SUV, despite the conditions of their fellow man."
While this is definitely A problem I don't think that it is THE problem. I'll tell you what I think THE problem is...
In Minneapolis/St.Paul (in Minnesota) (ILIM - I live in Minneapolis) there is a big ruckus going on about a new baseball venue. The baseball team wants a new venue, they say they need it in order to generate the revenue to compete with other teams. The baseball league was actually threatening to contract the league and make the local team - the Twins - dissapear unless a new stadium was made.
But the people didn't want a new stadium. Nobody wanted to pay a tax for it (and heaven forbid the team owners raise the $$$ for it themselves). While some people are nuts for baseball overall interest in the sport is waning and in survey after survey most people didn't care about baseball or the Twins when it came time to pay taxes for it. Politicians even came up with "We shouldn't tax the people to pay for this." At least, while they were trying to get elected, anyway.
But it keeps coming back. The people keep having to say "No we still really don't care about a new stadium. No, we STILL don't want to pay for it." The politicians who start out opposed to taxes to pay for the stadium switch to "Well maybe we can come to some agreement" to "I support this plan [which includes some tax to pay for the stadium]." It continues to pop up on talk radio - "Should we pay a tax for a new baseball stadium?" (The resounding reply always "No!")
Why does it keep coming up? Why does the city/state keep offering to poke its citizens in the pooper for the sake of those team owners? Why does a consistent "NO!" response from the people only seem to work for about 8 months (if that)?
Because economics is not (locally, anyway) a zero sum game. Because the city and hence the people win if the team flourishes. Because trickle-down-economics isn't entirely full of crap.
A new stadium has an effect (of debated magnitude) on attendance. Good attendance has an effect on local business. Local business has an effect on downtown vibrance. Downtown vibrance has an effect on quality-of-life for city residents (not to mention tax revenue which also effects quality-of-life). The question is deciding just how badly to sodomize the citizens for the stadium, and where the balance goes.
The REAL PROBLEM is that what is _good_ for Joe Citizen is _even_better_ for Joe Corporation. The government wants its people to be employed, right? So we gotta help our corporations kick ass so that they can hire a bunch of people to do the work. But whose ass is the corporation kicking...?
THE SOLUTION (that I propose at least - hey what do I know but if you're gonna criticize at least try to offer a solution) is that you can't let the corporation become a sinkhole for money (which equals power). There needs to be a cap on executive pay relative to worker pay. There also needs to be a cap on the profit margin (think of it as corporate pay). (You know that Microsoft has like $40billion in cash reserves? This is part of what allows them to influence the government and engage in various underhanded activities. This money could be flowing back into the economy as paychecks or better yet as stock dividends.)
The positive power of capitalism is that it attaches individuals doing what is best for themselves to what is best for the economy. The success of the company == the success of the individual is a good thing, because darwin will always select companies which do the best for themselves. We just need to adjust (readjust?) the balance of where the good of actions shakes out, as it currently favors the company over the individual.
This needs to be an ongoing effort, because companies doing what is best for themselves i
If his new employer wants him bad enough then they will agree to cover his legal battles.
No HS diploma comes with Hard Drive read/write technical expertise. If a company spends the time and money to give someone that expertise, it is unreasonable to allow that person to take it to a competitor. It can cost many thousands to train and employ someone, when you are going to hire someone you want some surety that the person won't just take the training and run. If M$ offered me big money, I could get fired in order to invalidate a non-compete. There are plenty of scumbags in the tech ranks not just in board rooms.
Consideration in the legal sense is not that they have "considered" the contract, but rather it is the thing that is exchanged. In this case, the consideration you receive is your salary.
See Consideration.
In future, if you don't know what you're on about, then shut the fuck up already, capisce?
The article never said he couldn't work for WD for two years.
Problem #1 How will they enforce this?
#2 He could still do work for WD as a freelance consultant.
Stick it to em bro.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
If Seagate prevents him from working in the job he is best qualified to do, the judge should order Seagate to pay him what he would have made at the new job for the duration of the injunction.
Non-competes are career killers -
Why do they think they can legalize the murder of a technical person?
What is he supposed to do for two years, flip burgers at White Castle?
WD can employ a personal assistant who's job is to take care of anything the former Seagate employee needs.
That way he is not working for WD, the WD assistant works for him (at WD's expense).
A legal loophole? Maybe...
If seagate want's him to basically 'shut up' for 2 years, they should pay him 4 years salary, lump sum.
Then he can at least kick back and relax on the beach for a good long vacation.
"... You both are wrong. There is a decision from the European Court declaring ... "
...
... which indicates that you don't understand contract law 101, making it questionable that you understand advanced EU law. Very funny.
You suggest you know something about EU court decisions, but
then you state
"(There is another argument why those clauses are void: As soon as your contract ends, all clauses within the contract end too. All your former company has to enforce certain things to you are laid down in law, not in contract.) "
The employment contract is not a contract that starts on the day you enter the workplace, and stops on the day you leave the workplace -- the length of the contract is entirely determined by the clauses in the contract, so if your contract has a clause that says "non-complete" for 3 months beyond your service, then that clause of the contract is still valid for 3 months beyond your service.
If you are going to talk like you know something about law, but you aren't actually trained in it, try an "IANAL" line.
"Even though it's highly likely it was unenforcable (restraint of trade and all that... despite what some posters have implied these kind of contracts get voided all the time) I crossed out the offending paragraphs before sending it back. Never heard a whimper out of them."
While it is true that there are some overzealous contracts out there that have unenforceable terms, it is also true that non-complete clauses have been enforced against employees (in some cases where employees have really abused employer's commercial confidentiality).
Please don't give the impression that these clauses can "just be ignored", because some poor slashdot reader may just do that any find themselves on the end of a lawsuit.
If you are going to play with the big boys (i.e. legal contracts) then try knowing what you are doing, otherwise you're just asking for trouble.