Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

Microsoft Corp. announced last week that it is immediately eliminating noncompetes for all employees below the partner and executive levels, including doing away with all existing noncompetes for covered employees. In a June 8, 2022 blog post, Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel and Vice President of Human Resources said the following:

Empowering employee mobility: Microsoft believes that all employees should be empowered to work at a company they love and in a role where they thrive. We work hard to retain our world-class talent by making people the priority, and creating a culture that attracts and inspires world-class talent to unlock innovation aligned to our mission. While our existing employee agreements have noncompete obligations, we do not endorse the use of such provisions as a retention tool. We have heard concerns that the noncompetition clauses in some U.S. employee agreements, even when rarely and reasonably enforced, feel at odds with our talent principles. With these concerns in mind, we are announcing that we are removing noncompetition clauses from our U.S. employee agreements, and will not enforce existing noncompetition clauses in the U.S., with the exception of Microsoft’s most senior leadership (Partners and Executives), effective today. In practice, what this means is those U.S. employees will not be restricted by a noncompete clause in seeking employment with another company who may be considered a Microsoft competitor. All employees remain accountable to our standards of business conduct and other obligations to protect Microsoft’s confidential information. (Emphasis added).

California, the Golden State, is a special place to live and work. However, if you are an employer in California, you have most likely heard warnings of what you cannot do in terms of protecting your workforce and trade secrets and preventing unfair competition. While the rules of the road are different in California, employers are not without tools to protect their resources. And those tools are the focus of this program: what you can do to protect your workforce and trade secrets in California.

Join our colleagues Steven R. Blackburn, James A. Goodman, and Peter A ...

The beginning of the year is a time of high employee mobility, and with that mobility comes a risk of litigation between the hiring employer and the former employer - particularly when the two companies are direct competitors.