Comments on: Non-Competes Can Hurt Your Hiring

By: Neil Murphy

Neil Murphy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:32:23 +0000

I have seen the same sort of agreement in the UK, however I am not sure its enforceable in law. Some years ago there was a judgement in a court case where the judge ruled that it was the legal right of any person to work for anyone who would employ him, thus making such agreement unenforceable. however I never heard where this case went after that, whether it was appealed or whether companies found ways round it.

There is a more general principle in English law which goes something like an employee does owe a duty of care to their employer, and this concept could be applied to people leaving one company and taking intellectual property to another. So taking these concepts together it may be you can’t enforce a no complete as such, but you can sue if IP is transferred, and most companies will have to be careful about how they use staff poached from other companies.

By: Jacob T. Nielsen

Jacob T. Nielsen — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:16:51 +0000

I live in Denmark(Europe) so I had to go wiki “non-compete” and I am quite horrified by the power this gives the employer. My current company has this restriction which is quite common in denmark:

“For a period of 6 months after resignation, the employee cannot pursue a position at any company affilited with the current company in the field of your work…”

This is basically what is says. However, in order to inforce this policy, the company must pay 50% of salary to the employee for those 6 months.

In most cases I believe it is more like @Karen Siwak states, here in Danmark as well.

By: Karen Siwak

Karen Siwak — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:17:52 +0000

http://venturelaw.blogspot.com/2007/01/non-compete-clauses-canada-vs-us.html
This article provides a good overall discription of how non-compete laws differ between Canada and the US. In short, non-compete restrictions are enforced by Canadian courts for employees in fiduciary positions (senior execs), even if there isn’t an explicit non-compete contract. On the other hand, courts tend not to enforce non-compete restrictions for general employees, even if its written in a contract, but will enforce a non-solicitation agreement.

By: Will at Virtualjobcoach

Will at Virtualjobcoach — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:25:47 +0000

In the US there has been an increase in the enforcement of non-competes (recent MS/Google tiff), but most states really don’t enforce them. I believe that MD and CA are the states that are more prone to enforce. Tip is to take the vague ‘non-compete’ that is boilerplate and WAY TOO BROAD and make it specific to the product that you are working on.

By: Dwayne Phillips

Dwayne Phillips — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:31:23 +0000

In government circles, government employees try to sole source contracts instead of having competitions. The reason is that having a competition is not any fun and usually produces a bad outcome.

Given the Federal Acquisition Regulations – the competition usually does not award a contract to the firm that produces the best product. The award almost always goes to the firm that wrote the best proposal. There is a difference among the two.

The most desired outcome of a competition is to do it in such a way as to not cause a protest from a losing firm. To avoid these, you check off all the boxes in the most stringent process available. Making stupid decisions is not grounds for a protest, but failing to dot an “i” or cross a “t” is grounds for a protest.

The system, the regulations are the cause of the pain and the reason for not competing contracts.