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MA Gov. Wants To Ban Non-Competes; Will It Matter?
curtwoodward (2147628) writes "Entrepreneurs in Massachusetts say the state's legal enforcement of non-competition agreements hurts innovation — if you're going to get sued by Big Company X, you're probably not going to leave for a startup in the same industry. But those contracts have powerful supporters, including EMC, which is by far the state's largest tech company. Gov. Deval Patrick is finally picking a side in the debate by introducing his own bill to outlaw non-competes and adopt trade-secrets protections instead. Just one catch: he's a lame duck, and will be out of office in January."
Don't they stop employees from taking any kind of IP and running away with it, which would basically kill the industry?
There's something illegal in California that ought to be in other states as well.
Slashdot Beta is ruining the Slashdot ecosystem.
"Just one catch: he's a lame duck, and will be out of office in January."
Feature, not a bug.
I fully support this. I work for EMC in Massachusetts. I think my non-compete clause as a regular engineer only comes into play if I take a significant ownership position in a competing company, but that pretty much eliminates any possibility of me doing a startup.
What I really want to see is the elimination of trade secret restrictions on employee salaries. Employees should be free to discuss their salaries. I'm sure they don't want a survey to show that engineers with similar experience have radically different salaries depending on immigration status (wild speculation on my part, but since I can't talk to my H1-B friends, wild speculation is all I have).
i don't understand why that's a "catch". these dark days of oligarchy, this may be the main way we get any honest political effort.
Ex employee here, my lawyer pretty much laughed at the incredible reach of EMC's employment agreement, which effectively states that "If at any time, any point in the future, you publish an idea, which we believe you may have originally thought of while working for us, even though you never used it, wrote it down, or discussed it with anyone during your employment; you agree to immediately turn over all rights to said idea, including buying out the rights from any co-creators, at your own expense".
It seems like everyone has to sign these anymore, even me, and I often wonder how many companies bother to attempt enforcement of them for most employees.
Sure, there are high-profile "key employees" who have limited employment options outside of another company doing the same thing, and within an industry you'd be hard-pressed to hide your employment status. A TV news anchor isn't going to don a fake moustache and wig to read the TV news at a competing TV station and fool anyone.
But I think of someone like me, working at a SMB consultancy. If I wanted to work at another consultancy (which, near as I can tell from the boilerplate kind of language in mine is considered competition) it seems like my current employer would have to work pretty hard to enforce the agreement.
I'd quit my job and make up some story about either not having a job or tell them I'm taking a job elsewhere. They'd have to hire a private detective to figure out where I'm working (mine doesn't have an employment disclosure clause). Then they'd have to hire an attorney to go after me.
All this sounds like a lot of money and effort for most employees, all the more so for someone who was really motivated to get around it.
Now just ban those ridiculous "anything you make while employed by us belongs to us" clauses.
Fuck them. They're stupid. Who cares if morons do or do not have noncompetes. It's not like it matters since the people there are so stupid.
I signed a NCA that prevents me from, for example, taking everything I know about my company and literally walking down the street and selling my knowledge to one of our direct competitors. IMO, this is a perfectly reasonable restriction.
What really hurts innovation is software patents. Somebody, somewhere, could probably sue us for some feature in every piece of software we sell. We'd need a legal department ten times the size of our entire company to even know whose toes we might be stepping on. The same is probably true for every other small business in the country, software or otherwise.
You want me to sign a non-compete? Ok, then sign mine:
You, the employer, agree not to hire any person to fill my position (or other open positions which have substantially similar responsibilities and skill requirements) when I leave the company.
We don't have to speculate. California law severely limits the enforcement of non-competes. It seems to work well there, so it probably will in Massachusetts.
Don't they stop employees from taking any kind of IP and running away with it, which would basically kill the industry?
You're confusing non-compete with a non-disclosure agreement. Non-competes are generally illegal/unenforceable and rarely upheld, unless the company you're coming from pays you to effectively remain out of the employment market for a period of time. Non disclosures are absolutely enforceable (and these are about taking IP from one company to your next), and is usually what gets former employees in trouble. I'm under an NDA from my last employer, and a non-solicitation through the first week of next month. I'm not under a non-compete, and the company I now work for indirectly competes with my former employer. But, I still can't divulge any trade secrets I know of to my current employer (not that I can't tell my new employer how *not* to do something based upon knowledge).
For those who worship the sanctity of contract, please remember one cannot legally contract slavery. And that is what long non-compete clauses amount to -- the inability to market your skills ties you to the employer. Trade secret protection is a very different thing used as a smoke-screen. Unequal barganing power and contracts of adhesion are further aggravations.
And you've taken away the I-tag again! I don't know why I'm still coming back here...
Apple, of course, invented their UI all by themselves, right? Never took any ideas from Xerox. Nope.
Nope. They bought the rights from Xerox. Different thing entirely. Micorsoft and the movie industry, though - they wer another matter and have the lawsuits (and subsequent settlement in the case of Microsoft) to prove it.
I wish the Apple-haters around here would at least get their history straight. I'm not an Apple fanboy. However, I am a computer history fanboy and I wish the amateurs would at least not keep spreading misinformation.
That is all.
Whether Apple paid for Xerox's ideas or not, the fact is, the flow of ideas from Xerox to Apple meant that the state of art moved forward. When Microsoft copied similar ideas to Apple, the state of art didn't stagnate either. Ideas flowed through many people and it didn't cause the industry to stagnate.
Nope. They bought the rights from Xerox.
If they bought the rights from Xerox then why, in the middle of the Apple/Microsoft suit, did Xerox try to sue them for infringement?
In the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit, Xerox also sued Apple alleging that Mac's GUI was heavily based on Xerox's.
Apple purchased the Xerox patents later.
The mere prospect of a lawsuit from your former employer (typically alleging theft of trade secret, unlawful conversion, etc.)
is sufficient to make your potential new employer look askance. It's not whether you (or the new employer) will prevail in court, it's whether when choosing between prospective employee A (with sabers rattling in background) and prospective employee B (quiet).
1. As long as the agreement is in force, full salary and benefits. 2. In a similar vein, if you insist on specific grooming (e.g., haircuts for guys, tattoo removal or something) then you have to pay for it, pay triple the normal salary since I'm subject to your grooming ritual 24 hours a day, and continue that pay during the six years it take my hair to grow back when I stop working for you.
Name one thing he has done....not all at once there [crickets...]
My state is one of the most corrupt and bloated bureaucracies in the nation. I'm surprised something like this is even an option here. I'll be more surprised if it ever actually passes.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
Whether Apple paid for Xerox's ideas or not, the fact is, the flow of ideas from Xerox to Apple meant that the state of art moved forward. When Microsoft copied similar ideas to Apple, the state of art didn't stagnate either.
Nope, it went backwards.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Yes. There are examples above. I declined a job offer because a non compete would have prevented me from working in the state, because "they were training me". I had a degree in web design and had been doing it for over 6 years...I found a job that paid more too...it was putting paper into boxes. I know of others that lost out on jobs because it was the same industry and they were sued for taking "proprietary clients" which effectively put them out of business because of the legal costs.
They are little more than medieval fealty oaths that people are forced to sign by the power and leverage of former employers. There is no justification for them.
I thought conservative libertarians were supposed to support the "free market". The idea that if your employer is ripping you off then "it's a free country" and you can work elsewhere. Then they turn around and support things like non competes which if measured in "freedom units" would be much more tyrannical than a minimum wage or anti discrimination laws.
And spare me the "if you don't like it don't sign the contract" line of bs. If people were able to unionize there might be some way we could fight back against this crap on our own. The fact is a reasonable person has no way of getting assurance from his fellow tradesmen that there will be an organized strike on such agreements, so he signs it knowing that if he doesn't, someone else will.
If you think workers should have to get an different MBA/Doctorate for every job they choose to work I hope you and your entire extended family die in a bus accident.
I was under the impression that several courts have applied a doctrine called "inevitable disclosure" to let a former employer enforce a non-disclosure agreement as if it were a valid non-compete.
If his choices were to sign a non-compete or not be employed in the industry, that's not a real choice.
Please be careful of falling into "no true Scotsman". One could always make ends meet by being employed in a different industry.
If you violate a non-compete, who the hell do you think the company goes to for enforcement? We allow, and even expect, government to interfere with contracts all the time: either because they have no meaning without some third party to actually enforce them
Under some libertarian ideologies, that's the whole reason a government exists: to enforce private contracts.
Do you believe that government should not interfere with a contract that, say, grants ownership of one human being to another?
Governments already enforce custody agreements, which grant ownership of a child to a particular parent or guardian until the child reaches the age of majority.
Nice try, but the fact that you felt it necessary to deny being a fanboy, referred to others as "Apple-haters" and were factually incorrect (see jklovanc's reply) kinda suggests that you are and Apple fanboy after all.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC