Thanks for the great response — a number of very thoughtful posts in this forum. I have read them all (as of 2/10). Additionally, I received several dozen personal email responses on the issue, to which I have also responded. Many good stories, many useful arguments, some helpful specific suggestions. At a high level, I …
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Re: Non-competition agreement in another profession
Dear Will, I am 100% in favor of getting rid of non-competition agreements. They even exist in other professions than the tech industry. I remember that a friend had to sign a non-competion agreement when she went to work at a beauty salon. She could not work for another salon or open a salon within …
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Non-competes of "very limited utility" in China, unenforceable in India
While China and India are often accused of having lax labor standards, non-competes are one area where their laws are stronger than in Massachusetts. Perhaps we should consider their laws as a model for Massachusetts: Re China, from http://www.chinalawblog.com/2010/01/employee_noncompete_agreements.html “Employers simply need to face the fact that non-competition agreements have very limited utility under Chinese …
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employers have other ways to protect themselves that make more sense
will, thanks for sponsoring such an important piece of legislation. i’ve signed over a dozen non-competes in software and life science industries on both coasts. too often they lead to ill-will and excessively long legal discussions leading to acceptance of a intentionally vague document, because its “standard” and/or “un-enforceable” i’ve come to understand, however, that …
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Balancing company rights vs. employee’s rights
If the purpose of non-competition agreements is to preserve companies’ ownership of specific technologies or intellectual property developed by and legaly ownable by them, then non-competetion should be STRICTLY limited just to those items, and not allowed to effect a blanket and open-ended suffocation of further innovation by the employee (once he/she leaves the company). …
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Job Descriptions Matter
In technical fields, scientists and development engineers are subject to NCAs, but so are quality engineers, technical writers, and UX people, to name a few, often because they work in the engineering part of the organization. However, non-engineers are not about to apply what they know about their last company’s products to those of the …