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Judge says Internet Obsoletes Lengthy Non-Competes
dashNine writes "The NLJ's Law News Network has this story on a New York case in which a judge refused to enforce a Web firm's noncompete clause, saying that "in the Internet environment, a one-year hiatus from the work force is several generations, if not an eternity." Another well-deserved nail in the coffin of this instrument. " Non-competes are definitely an annoying part of the industry. Do you think this is legit?
#include
Using the speed of technological change as an argument against them is novel, and I'm not sure how happy I am with that. It would be far better to strike down non-competion clauses completely.
I'm not sure how happy I am with non-competition clauses in general. You do have to see it from the the employer's point of view.
In this particular case, I don't think the company has a justification for suing the guy and I agree with the judge.
But let's say you work for General Widgets Corp. and you are heavily involved with the design of what amounts to a technological breakthrough in widgets. Just before General Widgets is about to patent its UltraWidget XLT incorporating the breakthrough, competitor Widgets R Us learns of this and decides to hire you to implement the breakthrough on its new MegaWidget Deluxe, which is will compete with UltraWidget XLT. General Widgets spent hundreds of millions of dollars on developing UltraWidget XLT, and now Widgets R Us has hired you and essentially gotten the technology for free.
Sure, UltraWidget XLT should also be covered by a Non-Disclosure Agreement, but these usually contain a clause non-compete clause.
So is it fair that GW has spent all this money developing UWXLT only to lose it to WRU? I'm guessing that most people would say "probably not." In this case, I would have to say that the non-compete clause is justified.
My journal has hot
Much of it depends on the scope of the agreement. If we are talking about a narrow field that competes for a small group of customers, then I'd say that non-competes are understandable. It would be one thing to demand that an employee not sell general programming services for a year after quitting. It would be quite another to demand that an employee of, say, Borland's compiler division, not quit and join Microsoft's compiler design team. (And actual event.)
In addition, employees aren't always ethically free in these situations. If, for example, I worked for a web designer, became disgruntled, quit, contacted my former company's largest customer, and convinced them to switch to my new company, well, I don't see how that is particularlly "ethical". There the ones that did the work necessary to aquire the customers. Why should I profit off of that? I think that it is perfectly reasonable for a company to demand that I not deliberately go after their customers if I quit.
On the other hand, it should be obvious that with a reasonable agreement, I should be able to quit and go off and form my own web design company, as long as I don't deliberately try to take my former company's customers with me.
The cake is a pie
At a previous company I worked for I was made to sign a non competition agreement as part of my employment. It really did not bother me to do this.
Later in my employment at this company I had some legal questions about some of the things in my employee agreement so I went to see a lawyer. The lawyer told me that the non-competition clause in my employee contract wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. In a right to work state like Utah this type of agreement was not allowed. The only thing that a company could enforce was the employee could not use company secrets/patents/code in another company. Also the employee could not use the "goodwill" that the company has with vendors/customers etc. Other than that the employee is free to work for any competitor he chooses.
Of course I am not a lawyer and this is not meant as legal advice. Also this may only pertain to the state of Utah, your mileage may vary.
The moral of the story is that contracts are most effective because the person signing them thinks that it is legal and it keeps him from doing anything against that contract. The creators of the contract I signed knew that the non-competion clause was not valid but put it in there as an intimidation tactic to keep the employees from going to a competitor.
Non competes exist solely to spite leaving exmployees, and really shouldn't be enforced anywhere. I mean, let's take a look at the possible scenarios that cause noncompete clauses to come into play.
1. An employee becomes fed up with some aspect of his job, and it is not resolved. He quits. Now, because his prior employer didn't care enough to make sure he was happily employed, he can't work for anyone else, either.
2. An employee is "downsized." On the merit that the company couldn't afford to keep him employed, no other company should be able to employ him either. Huh?
3. An employee is fired for poor work. Does the firing company really care if he competes with them, if he was that bad? Let him work for your competitors and drain their payroll!
I would venture that most times an employee leaves a job, it is for one of those reasons, #1 probably being a huge factor. The only time a noncompete clause could really work is if company A tries to lure away company B's best employees by offering to pay them more. BUt hey -- you get what you pay for! Give your employees raises, pay them competitively and you won't have to worry about them leaving for another job. Noncompete clauses really aren't a viable deterrent and really only hurt the employees that leave with a valid reason. A
The main problem as I see it stems from the fact that most "older, more traditional" companies have not yet updated their contracts to reflect the fast-changing nature of the 'net. If the clause says something like "I will not compete in markets similar to the market this company operates in" that can be VAST if the company does something on the 'net, and most companies today at least have a 'net presence.
What if you've built an e-Commerce website for a car company and you've signed a non-compete agreement like this. Does that mean now you can't build an e-Commerce website for that electronics firm who would like to contract you? What's the marketplace, autos and electronics or e-Commerce and Web?
Another related problem comes from the sorts of "IP non-compete" clauses that has shown up in contracts I've read. The contract may say "I will not use knowledge acquired during the course of this project to assist other companies during similar projects."
That's understandable and even acceptable if you're doing genetic engineering where things you've learned on the job are legitimately unique and very likely can't be acquired elsewhere, but, again, what if you're building a website and during the term of the contract, say some new Java package that makes building servlets easier. Does that mean you are never allowed to use those new packages for other clients you may work for because you learned about them during the course of your building a website for the people who made you sign the contract?
Another scenario: What if you've used "Acmesoft sitebuilder" to build the site for Company A. Since you've signed this "IP non-compete" agreement, does that mean you can't use the skills with Acme Sitebuilder you've honed while building Company A's site to build more sites for other companies with Acme Sitebuilder?
With the speed at which technology advances in this industry and the amount of effort it takes for programmers and technicians and consultants to keep up with it, it's silly to expect that anything you might learn during the course of one job should not be applied to a subsequent job. In this industry you can't help but learn new stuff no matter what the job might be!
If nothing else, what you should learn from this sort of thing is: READ THOSE CONTRACTS CAREFULLY !
And don't just look for non-compete clauses! I had to refuse to put my name on a contract once because for whatever reason, everyone else involved in the process missed the clause that stated that any work I or anyone else in the company I represented produced would be wholly and solely owned by the company for whom we were contracting, even though I was the only person working on the contract!
Newcomers to contracting, naieve programmers and people who are simply too lazy to read their contracts carefully can get burned by any of this sort of thing. Having laws that make it illegal, or at least imply that they are unethical and unenforceable are nice, but ultimately it really falls onto the person signing the contract to make the decicion whether or not they can bide by the terms therein.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
The classical argument for such agreeements is that the employee consented to the clause and therefore knew what he was doing when he signed away his freedom to work at a competitor. These are good for the employer to the extent that they protect trade secrets and hurt the competition. They are good for the employee to the extent that the employee might get a higher salary in return.
On the other hand, this was likely a boiler-plate contract that the employee had no real control over (no sign, no job). Thus, is there really consent? It would amount to near slavery to force the employee to stay on the job or leave the industry. I would agree that such a contract provision is unconscionable, particularly in the Internet industry where time flies.
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, see an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
The level of misinformation and erroneous explanations of law I'm seeing in other posts is unusually high . . .
The law has *always* been hostile to agreements in restraint of trade, *including* non-competition clauses. Not just in some states, not just in the U.S., but the entire English speaking world which inheritted the Common Law of England.
In front of me is a case on the subject from 1711. Yes, nearly 300 years old. [Mitchel v. Reynoldds, 1 P. Wms. 181, 24 Eng. Rep 347 (K.B. 1711)]
It applies the same rules used today. An agreement in restraint of trade, particularly one barring a man from engaging in his trade, is presumed illegal, and must be shown to be necessary, Particularyly, a non-competition clause must be necessary to accomplish the purpose of the contract.
In Mitchell, a baker sold his bakehouse, and agreed not to compete in that parish for five years--which he promptly violated, claiming that the bond was void by law. The court found the clause enforceable because it was the only way the business could possibly be transferred--if the old baker could open again across the street, he would take all of the business that had supposedly sold to the new baker. So in that one parish (not even the entire city), the baker couldn't sell--but he could in the rest of England.
Essentially the same rules apply today. To enforce such a clause, it must
1) actually be necessary to achieve the contract,
2) be as limited in time as possible--only long enough to achieve the purpose needed, and
3) be limited in geography, only covering the minimal region needed.
Overstep any of these by even a little bit, and the entire clause is thrown out. In five years of full-time practice, I only saw one non-compete clause that it wasn't clear I could have thrown out [hint: *don't* try to write your own--pay someone who knows what he's doing.].
So there's nothing new or shocking here. If there's no trade secrets (these could include in-house techniques for getting the job done faster), you fail part one. Today, a year is forever, and it would be hard to conceive of any internet related field where a year wouldnt' be too long, and two fails. Three, however, isn't clear--the entire world might be a single geography for purposes of competition.
Just for an example: suppose that a week after they sold slashdot, rob, hemos, & rob quit andover and formed the new cmdrtaco site, covering the exact same topics, and with discussion forums. If this were possible, and the non-compete clause couldn't be enforced, andover would be nuts to pay anything, and would certainly pay much less than they did. On the other hand, if andover could prevent them from competing for a year, andover would probably keep the audience if, a year later, they opened a competing site. In fact, much less than a year would do.
hawk, esq.
FYI, (IANAL,B) I understand that the term for a contract which is illegal - a contract in which one party signs away rights which the law says they cannot sign away - is a "contract of adhesion".
I presume what people are saying is that in places like CA, a non-compete is a contract of adhesion.
The problems with contracts of adhesion are
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-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
I was working for a small ISP and decided to move to another for various reasons, one being I saw more room for advancement with the new company. I had signed a no compete agreement when I was 20 and being offered 6.25/hr to do tech support. Which is total BS anyways. Over the course of two years my duties increased and I became a bigger part of the company. But being 22, I wanted to do different things and had an offer with better advancement options. I took the job. I got a restraining order. I went to court. And I won back my right to work. Now I am a happy system administrator for the ISP whos office is about 1/2 mile away from my old job :>
>In the case of non-compete clauses, courts have
>generally enforced them.
No, they haven't. The courts have always been hostile to these, and only enforced them when absolutely necessary.
>But, it would be great if more courts did side
>with the little guy like this!
The courts have been siding with the little guys on this for hundreds of years.
hawk, esq.
So, a judge realizes that in the Internet age, lengthy non-competes don't make any sense.
When will we see Congress wake up and realize that 50 year copyrights on software don't make any sense whatsoever?
Hmmm... IBM, Microsoft, CA, and the rest of the big software vendors would throw all their lobbying efforts against any change in the absurd copyright duration on software. I wonder when I can count on this changing?
I'm looking forward to the day when the first software copyright expires. I, for one, am anxious to get my hands on all that great ENIAC code!
Injured worker wins against Mattel!
I can name a company that uses noncompete clauses and has repeatedly won in court when they were challenged. It's Mackay Envelope, run by the book-writing cool guy Harvey Mackay, and he explains exactly why that is: here's how it works. :) ;) ) by walking off with most of the clients for a whole company, essentially killing them.
First of all, the Mackay noncompete is justifiable- it's for salesmen, and sales is such a personal occupation that one salesman can walk out of a company with basically the whole future of the company. Mackay did this to start his own envelope company, and vowed never to let anybody do it to _him_. As he put it, if he'd backed a truck up to the factory and taken every envelope in the place he'd have done his previous employer less damage- he took their _future_, 'cos he wanted to be an envelope king
Secondly, the way Mackay gets around this problem with his contracts is simple- his noncompete clauses are incredibly fair and reasonable. A new salesman is given a bunch of accounts to take over and service when the salesman starts the job. Those names are written in the contract, and the guy can't take those with him when he leaves. Also, a large percentage of the customers are within the county Mackay operates in- the guy can't walk away with the customers _within_ the county for one year, after which it's open season. Outside the county, there are no rules.
The whole arrangement is designed to make it perfectly reasonable for a departing envelope salesman to continue making a living, even for the company's archrival, even still selling envelopes. The customers the guy can't walk away with are specified. The area where the noncompete agreement protects Mackay is intentionally very limited- _one_ county in size. All this adds up to one fact- in order to have a problem with this agreement, a saleman would have to be trying very hard to hose Mackay. And that's been tried, and Mackay won in court, apparently several times, and was right to do so because what was being asked was quite reasonable and it wouldn't have been too hard to comply.
Real companies do require noncompete clauses. The wrong guy walking out could really hose a company, and it's not like anybody these days is so fat and happy that they can ignore being hosed and having tons of clients taken away. The trick is, of all the noncompete clauses, most of them _are_ crap. The ones that are not crap are the ones which are really very reasonable: "You can't take the clients I handed you when you started, for a year. You can't go after the guy across the street for a year, go down the street some. After a year, go nuts, if I can't keep the client that long I don't deserve it..." and that's how to do it.
As for the why to do it- Harvey Mackay started being an illustrious envelope tycoon (
As for the time constraint- that's a smokescreen though it is a valid concern. Read the statement: he was forbidden to work with 'an on-line service whose "primary business is to provide information technology professionals with a directory of third-party technology, software, or developer resources," an "on-line reference library" or an on-line store whose primary purpose is to "sell or distribute third-party software or product uses for Internet site or software development."' That's WAY TOO BROAD! Way way too broad. Forget 'internet time', this is the noncompete equivalent of those stupid patents. If it had been more sharply defined and less of a sweeping generalisation, the year duration might have even held up. I'd suggest narrowing it to _specific_ IT professionals, or to only 'sell Internet site development software' (basically, a noncompete saying 'For a year, do not work for a site created to serve webmasters'), or even geographical or computer-platform limits. As it is, that agreement seems vaguely specific, but to be a good noncompete agreement it has to be _painfully_ specific, protecting only the absolute heart of the business and only the most critical clients, and even then you're better off if you can specify particular ones, not _classes_ of client.
But instead, it's "Thou shalt not work for anybody selling access to information, or software, or web tools, or telling people where they are!" *furrfu*. This has little to do with 'internet time'. The whole noncompete agreement is fatally broad.
Again, it has to be _really_ specific. "Thou shalt not try to woo away Fred, or Bob, or Harold for a year, so we can get a head start 'cause we gave you those accounts in the first place. Also, don't work for a company that steals our mission statement, trademarks, and mailing list." _That_ would be a slamdunk. Who'd argue with that?
>>Right-to-work laws are pretty widespread in the US.
:) Right-to-work laws are laws that make closed union shops (where one must belong to the union to work) illegal. The rules treating non-competiton clause hostilly go back at least thee hundred year.
>annecdotal
Actually, it's irrelevant
Hawk, esq.
No - I read it quite thoroughly. But I don't have any recollection of internet time being a factor at all in previous cases - all the other factors aren't new, they've been used in previous non-compete invalidations. This, on the other hand, represents something new.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
It was acceptable for me because the work included stock (I even got it up front), the pay is very good, and I am in a key position in the company, with knowledge of almost every detail of what's going on.
Still, I'm going to quit next week.
So what if they invoke the non-compete? Then I'll take a nice long vacation, and after that sign up with a company not competing with them, and collect one pay check for working, and one for not competing :-)
But this is also fundamentally different from "normal" non-competes. Normal non-competes are one sided contracts that give your employer rights, and take away yours without compensation. In many countries the one sidedness of that alone would be enough to make a court throw out the clause.
My non-compete on the other hand, includes an admission that this is a severe restriction on me, and an agreement that if they impose the restriction, paying me my normal salary to do nothing (or to take work for a company they don't compete with), is a fair compensation.
It also means that they won't invoke it unless they really see a reason to it (if I'd been receiving calls from the competition :-)
Sounds like your present company is run by people who are in it for "the love of the game" as it were... More motivated by developing cool stuff than by profit motive?
/. and certainly nearly every poster here would recognise it. They are in it for the money. It's a good company, where lots of people do care about their work and about doing cool stuff. But make no mistake, the lawyers who run this shop do not work for the joy of building cool programs - they expect cold hard cash.
I work for a very large computer hardware and OS company that is frequently discussed (and often maligned - sometimes rightly so) here on
The reason we don't have a non-competition clause is, I suspect, that we also poach many employees from our competitors. Imagine if someone sued us because we hired somebody in violation of their non-competition agreement? (I imagine we must hire such people all the time.) We would look pretty stupid in court claiming that what we were doing was legal while trying to convince employees to sign away to us those same rights.
No, we would just look dumb and opportunistic. Looking dumb is very bad in the technology business, far worse than in other sectors.
At least that's my guess. I'm a small cog here and at least five layers of management are between me and the CEO, so I can only guess at our hidden motives.
Right-to-work laws are laws that make closed union shops (where one must belong to the union to work) illegal.
:^)
That's news to me. I've heard anti-non-competition rules called "right-to-work laws" on any number of occaisions. I suppose that's what I deserve for learning law from human resource people.
Although courts in common law jurisdictions have long taken a dim view of contracts that have the effect of restraining competition, non-competition wording has been standard and enforced in employment contracts for high-paid workers and in high-demand sectors for some time. As I understand it, it is only in relatively recent years that legislation and courts have begun dismantling them. Employment has not always been considered a market in which the courts should insure free competition.
At least, that's how I thought it had worked. Courts have long overturned contracts between businesses that reduce competition and contracts that undermine someone's right to enter into a competing business, but the right to seek employment per se has not always been so secure. Once again, I have to admit that much of the fairly little legal training I had was not in a common law environment. The country where I originally studied legal affairs was in part a Code Napoléan jurisdiction, where none of this would necessarily apply.
Again, I'm not a lawyer but:
If a truck driver is convicted of drunk driving, it seems to me that it is in the public interest for the court to ban him from working as a trucker. That has nothing to do with whether a trucking company can keep him from quitting if a competitor offers him more money.
A conflict in an employment contract falls under civil law, and the court system is somewhat different than the criminal system. The two haven't that much to do with each other. A criminal court can order a great many things that a private contract can't.
This doesn't mean that I agree with Mitnick's punishment (actually, let me take this opportunity to explicitly not express any opinion either way on that matter) but it does mean that I don't think the anything is coming out of the one case that could affect the other.
I can see the logic behind having your key people sign non-compete clauses (star developers, executives, and the like), but in those cases a non-compete often isn't used because the would-be employee will refuse to sign it - and the position they are in has enough clout that they can get away with it.
In practice, non-competes are generally used to keep worker bees from moving to better jobs, it seems. They're definitely used too often, and on average don't really accomplish much at all. I've seen a few articles in recent months citing non-competes that were struck down for reasons of just being too restrictive: this is the first one I've seen that used Internet Time as a reason. But any reason to strike down a non-compete clause is fine by me.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
There was a case in the news a while back about an engineer who signed a non-compete (knowing it was unenforceable, he didn't worry about it) and when he left was sued by his former employer. He went to court and won, but he was forbidden from accepting employment in his field while the case went on (over a year), and went bankrupt in the process. Then at the end, noone would hire him because he had been off work for a year suing his former employer.
I think this points out the real purpose of non-competes. Employers aren't willing to keep their people happy by paying and treating them well, so they'll keep them under threat of ruining their lives. Wonderful world we live in.
there's a slightly bigger issue underlaying this. Judge Pauley's decision doesn't address a company's covenant preventing employees from leaving to form their own start-up, which is potentially much more lucritive and dangerous. This is a much bigger problem that has existed in the manufacturing industries for 100 years.
J
The law in many jurisdictions (California, Florida and other states have statutes that make things different, and common law varies all over the place, so your mileage may vary) is simply this: A non-compete is protectable only to the extent that it is protecting a legitimate business interest and to the extent that the limitations are reasonable.
The meaning of those words varies widely, and the scope of what Courts may do varies as well, but too many judges fall back upon prior cases that have held 1 or two years to be "reasonable" per se -- this judge did exactly right, by looking at the totality of the circumstances, and making a determination. Whether the arguments there are applicable to any particular job remains to be seen, but the judge's legal analysis (and, intuitively, determination of the facts) appears right on: the question is where the balancing of the protectible interests versus the reasonableness of the constraints balances too much to the plaintiff.
Note that non-compete and non-disclosure are two radically different bodies of law. The mere fact you can work for a competitor under the policies of the Thirteenth Amendment and antitrust statutes is entirely different from the policies protecting real and legitimate trade secrets.
But don't try to do this at home, kids . . . every case is different, and every case can go 180 degrees the other way on the subtlest of factual differences.
I work in Silicon Valley too. My last employer, a small start-up, had me sign one of these non-competition clauses too. The clause still wasn't valid. I actually turned down an offer from one of their competitors - but it certainly wasn't due to any terms in my contract.
I guess companies figure that if you don't know the clause is worthless, you might obey it. One invalid clause doesn't invalidate the whole contract (it usually says so in the fine print somewhere, at least it always has on mine) so they have nothing to loose.
My current company actually doesn't have a non-competition clause, even though they loose a lot of people to competitors.
Maybe I'm ignorant, or naive, but i actually support non-competes. Non-competing clauses are signed by both parties. They know what they are getting into before they sign, if they sign and have a problem with that, its their fault. Also, I think that in the volatile world of the internet, non-compete clauses can prevent internet only companies from being totally hosed by someone with inside info.
We rant about patents alot. I think that non-competes are have much more benign "patent-like" effects. I would rather sign a non-compete clause for a short period than have to leave a company with patents barring me from doing anything...
-- Moondog
Non-competion clauses are already illegal in many places. Right-to-work laws are pretty widespread in the US. This New York decision, assuming it isn't appealed, applies only to NY and states with court agreements with them (if any - I don't know which states have such agreements.)
A good quote from the judge:
Read collectively, the effect of these provisions is to indenture the employee to EarthWeb. This court will not allow EarthWeb to expand the agreement's confidentiality provision so that it potentially has that result, (...) nor can EarthWeb make an end-run around the agreement by asserting the doctrine of inevitable disclosure as an independent basis for relief.
I always thought non-competion clauses were a barbaric, anti-labour practice. In California, they are already considered against public policy and have no force.
Using the speed of technological change as an argument against them is novel, and I'm not sure how happy I am with that. It would be far better to strike down non-competion clauses completely.
The business community will, of course, complain that this prevents them from securing their intellectual property and acts to undermine business. However, since the computer industry is more concentrated in Calfornia than anywhere else, and California hasn't allowed such contracts for years, I doubt businesses can make a good case that it harms innovation.
Workers should own their own skills and should be free to seek employment wherever they choose. To me, this ought to be a basic human right.
You seem to imply that a contract is a contract no matter what. That's just plain wrong from a legal point of view.
Some notable exceptions in the common law:
- A contract entered into for the purpose of committing an illegal act is null and void.
- A contract entered into by a minor is null and void.
- And especially... a contract which nullifies your ability to make a reasonable living is null and void.
Also know that the judge has wide discretion here since this is a common law case and no written law is involved. While he has to follow precedents from higher courts, the rest is up to his own judgement.
Right now computer professionals of all kinds (yes, even MSCE weenies) are in very high demand. This places us in a position of strength when negotiating our contracts, not just in terms of wages, but in terms of other conditions as well. Even back in the early 90s, when demand (and compensation) was lower, I refused to sign non-compete clauses. While this may have cost me one particular opportunity or another, it did not seriously hamper my ability to get a job and make a good living.
An immediate gain is not worth the potentially crippling of one's career down the road, and immobility through a required 1 year hiatus gives your employer far too much of an advantage should you become dissatisfied with the job in any way (wages, working conditions, working hours, toxic boss, or relocation to name just a few possibilities). Far better to shop around a little longer than hamstring oneself by signing such an agreement, even if it impacts one's credit rating a little.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I didn't know prostitutes had to sign non-competes. I can imagine a pimp trying to enforce a non-compete:
Pimp: "Bitch...I kill you if you go work for Louis. Didja read my no-compete, ho?"
Prostitute: "I'm sorry Big Daddy, but your no-compete is illegal in NY state"
Pimp: "Goddamnit...the man always be trying to keep me down"
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
From my observations, my employer requires all employees to sign non-competes and employees still go off to other competitors after a year or so and nothing happens to them. I think my employers reasoning behind letting us programmers go is that they know they have a better chance of getting us back sometime down the road if they don't make a big deal over it (and many, many people do return, as weird as that sounds). I think some posts above have said similar things.
Now, my question is, when I was first hired as a programmer, I was 17. Now, does the non-compete agreement I signed considered null and void since I was under the legal age to sign binding contracts (18? 19?)? I don't know (and I'm not entirely worried about it, since I've seen that it's never enforced), just mildly curious.
Wow, a judge with a clue about the Internet!
This strikes me as mighty unusual. I hope this guy gets some more important cases, especially some about bogus patent claims.
I also hope he realizes that his jurisdiction is limited to just one piece of land, and does not extend to the Internet itself. Probably a difficult pill to swallow for someone in legal power.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I believe this is correct. I'm curious though, it sounds like we had the same professor. Granted, there is a lot of common ground between most introductory courses, but it sounds like the exact same course. Where do/did you go to school, if you don't mind my asking? :)
Non-compete agreements may not be enforced simply to reduce competetition. In other words, a non-compete does not bar you from working from a competitor unless one of 3 allgations is sustained -
You had access to trade secrets and your new employer ( who is in direct competition ) could and would use those secrets or
You were given specialized training at company expense that you would otherwise not have been able to receive or
You are taking industry goodwill from your old company to your new one. This case is usually for salespeople who have 'their' clients. Those clients might follow the salesperson rather than stick with the original company.
In this case, the judge looked at the allegations and found they did not meet the requirements above. He also noted quite correctly that a year is an infinity in this business. Non-competes may be successfully challenged if they have the effect of preventing a person from working. So the judge first dismissed the actionable claims, and then also found it non-enforceable for work prevention. Seems a reasonable ruling to me.