Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

The Illinois Appellate Court recently declined to adopt a bright line rule regarding the enforceability of five year non-competes or three year non-solicits, and instead directed courts to interpret the reasonableness of any such restrictive covenants on a case-by-case basis.

In Pam’s Acad. of Dance/Forte Arts Ctr. v. Marik, 2018 IL App (3d) 170803, the plaintiff dance company sued a former employee for breaching a non-disclosure agreement and restrictive covenant by allegedly opening a dance studio within 25 miles of plaintiff and soliciting students and teachers by means of ...

Thomson Reuters Practical Law has released a new edition of "Preparing for Non-Compete Litigation," a Practice Note co-authored by our colleague Peter A. Steinmeyer of Epstein Becker Green.

Following is an excerpt:

Non-compete litigation is typically fast-paced and expensive. An employer must act quickly when it suspects that an employee or former employee is violating a non-compete agreement (also referred to as a non-competition agreement or non-compete). It is critical to confirm that there is sufficient factual and legal support before initiating legal action. Filing a ...

In its 2008 landmark decision Edwards v. Arthur Andersen LLP (2008) 44 Cal. 4th 937, the California Supreme Court set forth a broad prohibition against non-compete provisions, but it left open whether or to what extent employee non-solicit provisions were enforceable. Since Edwards, no California appellate court has addressed that issue in a published opinion – until recently. On November 1, the California Court of Appeal in AMN Healthcare, Inc. v. Aya Healthcare Services, Inc., ruled that a broadly worded contractual clause that prohibited solicitation of employees for one ...

States across the country have been using enforcement actions, legislation, and interpretive guidance to limit employers’ ability to enforce restrictive covenants against low wage workers. The recent decision in Butler v. Jimmy John’s Franchise, LLC et. al., 18-cv-0133 (S.D. Ill. 2018) suggests this trend may extend to federal antitrust law.

The Butler case relates to the legality of certain restrictive covenants in Jimmy John’s franchise agreements.[1] The Complaint alleges that Jimmy John’s required franchisees to agree not to hire any job applicants who worked ...

Join Epstein Becker Green attorneys, Brian G. Cesaratto and Brian E. Spang, for a discussion of how employers can best protect their critical technologies and trade secrets from employee and other insider threats. Topics to be discussed include:

• Determining your biggest threat by using available data
• What keeps you up at night?
• Foreseeing the escalation in risk, from insider and cyber threats to critical technologies
• New protections and remedies under the Trade Secret Protection Act of 2014
• Where are your trade secrets located, and what existing protections are in place?
• What ...

On September 19, 2018, the New York Attorney General (“NYAG”) released a Frequently Asked Questions document (“FAQ”) regarding non-compete agreements in New York. The FAQ posits and answers the following basic questions about non-competes:

• What is a non-compete agreement?
• Are non-competes legal?
• Do I have to sign a non-compete?
• How could a non-compete affect me?
• How do employers enforce non-competes?

In addition, the FAQ advises employees on specific steps to take before signing a non-compete, as well as actions employees can take if they signed a non-compete and are ...

On April 13, 2015 we blogged about the decision of the Ninth Circuit in Golden v. California Emergency Physicians Medical Group, 782 F.3d 1083 (9^th Cir. 2015). There, the Ninth Circuit considered whether, under California law, an employee could be ordered to sign a settlement agreement that included language that restricted him, inter alia, from future employment with his former employer.

Dr. Golden is an emergency-room doctor who sued California Emergency Physicians Medical Group (“CEP”), among others, regarding his loss of staff membership at a medical facility.  His ...

Effective as of October 1, 2018, Massachusetts will become the 49^th state to adopt a version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (leaving New York as the only holdout). Massachusetts did so as part of a large budget bill recently signed into law, which also resulted in the adoption of the Massachusetts Noncompetition Agreement Act. (The text of the Massachusetts version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act is set out on pages 47-52 of the bill, H. 4868, while the effective date is set out on page 117. Here is a link to the entire budget bill.)

While there are differences from existing Massachusetts ...

We just published an article with Thomson Reuters Practical Law discussing garden leave provisions in employment agreements as an alternative or a companion to traditional employee non-compete agreements. With Thomson Reuters Practical Law’s permission, we have attached it here.

On August 10, 2018, the Governor of Massachusetts signed “An Act relative to the judicial enforcement of noncompetition agreements,” otherwise known as The Massachusetts Noncompetition Agreement Act, §24L of Chapter 149 of the Massachusetts General Laws. (That bill was part of a large budget bill, H. 4868, available here; the text of the provisions relevant here at pages 56-62 of the bill as linked). The Act limited non-competition provisions in most employment contexts to one-year and required employers wishing to enforce such a one-year period to pay their ex-employees for ...