You don’t need to wait for President Biden to fix what’s wrong with non-compete agreements
On Friday, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy . According to the Order, its goal is ...
Topic: trade secrets/competition
No, the feds should not ban noncompetes because of #MeToo
By Jon Hyman
A recent op-ed in the USAToday argues that the federal government should outlaw noncompete agreements because they trap workers in abusiv...
Lessons from Game of Thrones on an employee’s duty of loyalty #spoileralert
By Jon Hyman
If you haven’t yet watched this week’s episode of Game of Thrones , consider yourself warned. There are spoilers below. Turn back now if y...
How to recover a stolen computer from an ex-employee in seven easy steps
By Jon Hyman
As many as 60% of employees who are laid-off, fired, or quit admit to stealing company data. Sometimes, they download information on thei...
Bad employment policies lead to new legislation
By Jon Hyman
All the way back in October 2014 , I wrote about an Illinois Jimmy John's franchisee that had required all of its employees to sign a No...
Non-solicitation agreements are not a license to steal an employee's already existing customers
By Jon Hyman
Hall v. Edgewood Partners Ins. Center (6th Cir. 12/14/18) [pdf] asks a question that we see arise often in litigation with former employee...
What’s the worst employee exit you’ve ever seen?
By Jon Hyman
There is a right way to quit a job, and a wrong way to quit a job. Last week, a Twitter employee demonstrated the worst of the latter.
Apple employee gaffe illustrates risk posed by YouTube videos in protection of trade secrets
By Jon Hyman
An Apple employee lost his job this week after his daughter, Brooke Amelia Peterson, posted a YouTube video of her dad’s brand new, unrelea...
Does a LinkedIn request violate a non-solicitation agreement?
By Jon Hyman
In Bankers Life and Casualty Company v. American Senior Benefits (Ill. Ct. App. 8/7/17) , Bankers Life sued a former sales manager, Grego...
Is your non-compete agreement killing a fly with a sledgehammer?
By Jon Hyman
At least half of my legal practice is serving as outside labor-and-employment counsel for small to midsize businesses. And, increasingly, ...
The White House challenges states to reform non-compete agreements
By Jon Hyman
This week, the White House announced a call to action to reform non-compete agreements [pdf] . Instead of proposing sweeping federal legis...
President signs the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016—what employers need to know
By Jon Hyman
Yesterday, President Obama signed into law the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 . It creates a uniform, federal standard for the protectio...
Language matters when drafting restrictive covenants
By Jon Hyman
Consider the following language in a non-solicitation agreement: Neither PARTY will directly solicit for employment a current or former...
Are you doing enough to protect your trade secrets from theft in the cloud?
By Jon Hyman
Do your employees use Dropbox (or Google Drive, or Box, or iCloud, etc.) to store work documents? The appeal of these cloud services is easy...
Two all-beef patties, special sauce … and a noncompete?
By Jon Hyman
While the law of noncompete agreements is state-specific, generally you need three things to enforce such an agreement: reasonableness as t...
Apparently, an employee doesn’t need to sign a noncompete for an employer to enforce it
By Jon Hyman
I’ve always thought that for an employer to enforce a non-competition agreement against an employee, the employee actually had to sign the ...
Why you need employee-invention and IP agreements
By Jon Hyman
Taco Bell is defending claims by two former interns that they invented the Doritos taco nearly 20 years ago. They now want to be paid part o...
Does inevitable disclosure protect your company’s trade secrets? It depends.
By Jon Hyman
The most straightforward manner in which to prevent a former employee from jumping ship to one of your competitors is to have the employee s...
Does social media change the meaning of “solicitation?” (redux)
By Jon Hyman
Earlier this year, I asked the following question: “Does social media change the meaning of solicitation?” I concluded that absent a contra...
A hypnotic tale about choice of law and non-compete agreements
By Jon Hyman
Choice of law is one of the most important, and, often, most ignored decisions you can making in drafting a non-competition agreement. Lifes...