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FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

ftc.gov

31–40 of 189 posts

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#31
This is a step in the right direction. However, I don’t know how much more the FTC can do on a case by case basis.

I’m curious if the Supreme Court has taken up cases about non-competes and analyzed if they violate the constitution since they clearly block individual freedom to pursue a living.

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#32
post #8

We really need general regulations on non-competes. Bare minimum, it should be required that a company pay you a full salary if they want to block you from seeking employment elsewhere with your skills. If a company really cares that much about stopping competitors from taking advantage of your skillset, they need to be willing to pay up.

Then how would a company protect it's trade secrets?

“Uniform Trade Secrets Act” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Trade_Secrets_Act

Edit: My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that rather than having a blanket “everything is our secret” kind of contracts like we have now, the act requires the company to specify what they have that they consider a secret, and to show that they take steps to protect those secrets above and beyond regular day-to-day information exchange within their company.

For example, a list of customers would have to be explicitly identified as “secret”, and handled more carefully.

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#33
I'm not clear on why those non-competes were illegal when others aren't. Any lawyers in here willing to shine their flashlight on the right rabbit hole for me to descend? (I do have some experience in legal research tools and documents by proxy as a developer, just no significant knowledge of law.)

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#34

Is there a place I could learn about non-compete law? I'm curious whether my existing NC could be enforced.

It varies state by state since there are different rules by each on what clauses in non competes can be enforced. Some states like CA and MA straight up ban them.

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#35
post #8

We really need general regulations on non-competes. Bare minimum, it should be required that a company pay you a full salary if they want to block you from seeking employment elsewhere with your skills. If a company really cares that much about stopping competitors from taking advantage of your skillset, they need to be willing to pay up.

Then how would a company protect it's trade secrets?

Presumably if the trade secret is so important that the employee must absolutely not compete, then it is worth paying out salary and benefits during said noncompete.

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#37

[flagged]

The cancer warning label thing is one. It's basically slapped on just about everything now so everybody either ignores it or blindly follows it and in both cases the law is not helping the consumer. It has also driven up the cost of producing goods which is passed on to the consumer because companies either avoid the cert and apply the label or go through the time and effort of getting the cert.

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#38
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade secrets are already strongly and strictly protected at national and state level regardless of non compete agreements. You are never allowed to steal trade secrets or use them elsewhere even if you didn’t sign any agreement about it. An NDA isn’t even technically required. There are state and national laws which blanket ban using trade secrets outside of the company you worked for.

How would a previous employer know what a former employee is telling their current employer about what they know from their former employer? Not saying anything is right or wrong, just that when something is illegal doesn't mean it prevents that crime.

How would any other signed document let "a previous employer know what a former employee is telling their current employer about what they know from their former employer?"

A non-compete agreement doesn't actually "prevent" an employee from working at another company any more than an NDA prevents an employee from divulging confidential trade secrets.

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#39
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade secrets are already strongly and strictly protected at national and state level regardless of non compete agreements. You are never allowed to steal trade secrets or use them elsewhere even if you didn’t sign any agreement about it. An NDA isn’t even technically required. There are state and national laws which blanket ban using trade secrets outside of the company you worked for.

How would a previous employer know what a former employee is telling their current employer about what they know from their former employer? Not saying anything is right or wrong, just that when something is illegal doesn't mean it prevents that crime.

As far as I'm concerned, if you can hold it in your head, it's probably not worthy of being protected as a trade secret, at least if we're talking about something technical like software and not a KFC recipe. Downloading a bunch of data like the Uber guy is obviously theft, but being able to remember, in general terms, how some software program worked doesn't seem protectable to me: there's no way you could really re-implement it the same way just from memory unless you have some truly superhuman memory skills. Any modern codebase is huge, the product of dozens of people or more, and not something one person can hope to remember well enough to make a real copy.

Re: FTC cracks down on companies that impose harmful noncompete restrictions

#40

I wish federal law would just abolish non-competes completely. When I gave advanced notice to Tudor Investment that I would be quitting they threatened to fire me with cause so that they could still enforce the non-compete without paying me in accordance with NY state law. And they followed through with their threat, sending me a letter telling me I was being terminated with cause the day I officially quit. To make t…

> The NY Department of Labor also doesn't handle complaints if you're salaried above a certain threshold.

Source?

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