Non Compete Agreements

Non-Compete Agreements and Other Employment Covenants

A non-compete agreements is a clause used in a contract to forbid an employee who leaves working with the employer’s competitor. Non-compete covenants can also restrain a former employee from starting his or her own business in direct competition against their former employer. Non-compete agreements prohibits the former employee from using trade secrets of their former employer, such as client and information databases, to benefit the competitor. Non-compete covenants should be reasonable in time and geographic scope. Over-broad non-compete covenants may prevent an employee from working elsewhere at all. The more specific a non-compete covenant is, the more reasonable it will be.

Other employment covenants include restrictive covenants prohibiting former employees from using confidential information learned or accessed while employed; provisions prohibiting former employees from inducing other employees to leave the former employer or form a competing business; and, provisions prohibiting former employees from inducing customers to stop doing business with the employee’s former employer.

Before signing anything that restricts your access to future employment, we recommend having an attorney review the document. Allow our firm to sort out the restrictive language contained in employment agreements to ease your confusion. We can also help draft covenants not to compete or negotiate the terms of the agreement.