Non Compete Clauses: Adapting New Non-Compete Employment Laws

Roy Oppenheim from Oppenheim Law delves into the rapidly changing landscape of non-compete clauses, stressing the importance for both employees and employers to understand and adapt to these changes while ensuring protection of sensitive information and fair competition.

Hi, Roy Oppenheim from Oppenheim Law. One of the hottest areas in employment law right now is the area of non-compete clauses. And different states for a while, were starting to limit the rights that employers had to restrict their employees from competing with their employers. And now the Federal Trade Commission is coming very close to saying that they are generally going to be not permissible going forward. And so, if you’re an employee, and you are being asked to sign a non-compete clause, you must contact us, and we will review it, and probably tell the employer that they’re breaking the law. On the other hand, if you’re an employer, and you wanna make sure that your employees that may be involved with sensitive information don’t compete with you, we need to do a workaround and deal, and make sure that they don’t violate confidentiality provisions, that they don’t poach, and take employees with them when they leave, and that they never speak in a disparaging way against you as an employer.

Well, that doesn’t necessarily get you as far as them not competing. It certainly prevents them from using information that you paid them to develop and learn on your dime and then taking out with you, and that’s not permissible. And so, yeah, they can compete, but they’re gonna have to compete fairly. So, you may not be allowed to restrict them from competing, but they can’t take advantage, you know, download information from the computers, you know, and just hack the crap out of your computers, take your employees with you, and basically just, you know, set up shop across the street, that we can prevent from happening.

So, if you’re an employer and you’re concerned about, you know, protecting your intellectual property, protecting your employees and your infrastructure, and as well as making sure that confidential information doesn’t leak out, but confidential information could be your list of customers, for example. And so, if someone wants to compete, they can compete, but they can’t, like, steal your customers, you know, because they took that information. That’s clearly confidential information. So, if you’re an employer, as well as an employee, feel free to call us. It’s a very interesting topic, but it’s an area that’s growing like a weed.