Articles Posted in Non-Compete Agreement / Covenant Not to Compete

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When a staffing company hires professional recruiters, they probably don’t anticipate that they’ll recruit the company’s own employees to a competing staffing company, but that’s allegedly what a former director for Randstad did.

Randstad, a leader in the world of industry staffing and recruiting, recently filed a lawsuit against four former employees who allegedly left their positions at Randstad, without notice, to allegedly set up a competing staffing company just down the street from Randstad. The lawsuit alleges that the former director took his entire team, including two executive recruiters and the company’s office administrator, with him to work at the new staffing company he had just set up.

According to the complaint, Randstad’s former director knew that the two executive recruiters he was taking with him had signed confidentiality and non-compete agreements that prevented them from working for a competing company in the same geographic area for at least one year after their employment with Randstad had been terminated. The agreements also allegedly prohibited them from taking either clients or employees away from Randstad.

The complaint does not yet allege that the former employees stole customers away from Randstad, but it alleges that the fact that they started another staffing firm not far from Randstad’s offices should be sufficient to prove they posed a risk to Randstad’s business. Continue reading ›

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Non-compete agreements generally exist to protect a company’s legitimate business interests in the event an employee decides to leave to work for a competitor, but what if the employee is laid off through no fault of their own? Should a non-compete agreement still keep them from obtaining employment if their former position no longer exists? This is the question Dr. Crocker asked after he was laid off from his position at Greater Colorado Anesthesia (GCA) as the result of a merger.

When Crocker got another job with a similar company in the same geographic area, GCA sued him for breach of contract. The company pointed to the non-compete clause in Crocker’s employment contract, but Crocker responded by suing his former employer, saying the non-compete agreement was overly burdensome by preventing him from obtaining valid employment as a doctor. Continue reading ›

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Running a nation-wide business here in the U.S. is almost as complicated as running an international business. With varying laws and restrictions between each city, county, and state, businesses need to make sure each of their locations is working in accordance with all the relevant business and labor laws governing that location.

But according to a recent lawsuit filed against Brown & Saenger, Inc., the South Dakota-based company allegedly tried to get around the need to abide by other states’ labor laws by specifying that all legal disputes were to be handled in South Dakota state court, under South Dakota law. The problem with that turned out to be North Dakota’s laws prohibiting non-compete and non-solicitation clauses in employment contracts.

The lawsuit involved a sales representative who worked for Brown & Saenger in their Fargo, North Dakota location and whose employment contract included both a non-compete agreement and a non-solicitation agreement in violation of North Dakota law. The contract also specified that it was to be held liable under South Dakota law, and in the event of a dispute over the contract, the parties would argue their cases in South Dakota court. Continue reading ›

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Non-competition clauses are common in the technology industry and have recently made headlines again.  IBM filed a suit against its ex-executive with allegations that her new position violates a year-long non-compete agreement.  This has allowed for the company to implement similar efforts, in order to increase diversity.

The executive that worked for IBM for a period of greater than two decades, is now being sued on the basis of violating a non-compete agreement. She was said to have “abruptly resigned” making it all seem more like a ploy.  Being a senior, she had knowledge of sensitive material and secrets that included recruitment strategies, plans, and initiatives.  It is alleged that this information will be also utilized in her work performed for Microsoft and is, therefore, a violation of terms. IBM complained that, whether intentional or not, using and disclosing, its confidential and sensitive information would place the company at a competitive disadvantage. According to them, it is “inevitable” that she will not be able to do so.  They further went on to state that she possesses “non-public diversity data, strategies, and initiatives — can cause real and immediate competitive harm.”

IBM sued in their filing, within a New York Federal Court, and succeeded in getting a restraining order preventing their ex-employee, who led diversity efforts from joining Microsoft.  The conditions which IBM wish to impose are rather broad. It included a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction to prevent her from working for a year, in any position, anywhere in the world and for any company that is a competitor to IBM.

Continue reading ›

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Uber settled its legal fight after being accused of plotting to steal self-driving technology, which is considered to be the way of the future. It took more than four days in court, which included arguments and testimony. An overall case worth stood at $245 million.  The settlement was mainly concerning the trade secrets. The case was between Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and could be considered one of the most intense legal fights of Silicon Valley. This is especially since it concerns a startup vs. one of the biggest technology giants’ parent. The overall potential of the industry is trillion-dollars that are predicted to transform transportation.

The case showcased what many in Silicon Valley normally struggle with: the sudden rise of start-ups, the workings of the rich companies, the rivalries, and competition for talent.  Continue reading ›

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When Google’s ride-sharing company, Waymo, sued Uber for using Waymo’s trade secrets, it used as evidence the lidar (light detection and ranging) sensor Uber was designing for its self-driving vehicles. Waymo saw the design by accident when the manufacturer (who was making the lidar systems for both Uber and Waymo) accidentally sent Waymo a mock-up of Uber’s lidar system. Although Uber claimed the design was fairly standard, Waymo alleged it was too similar to their own to be a coincidence.

According to Waymo, Uber allegedly obtained knowledge of Google’s self-driving trade secrets when they bought Otto, a self-driving truck company. Otto was founded by Anthony Levandowski, who used to work as an engineer for Google to develop their self-driving technology. Just a few months after he started Otto, his company was bought by Uber and Levandowski became an employee of Waymo’s competitor.

Waymo alleged files regarding their self-driving technology went missing from Google’s servers around the time Levandowski quit his job with Google. The fact that he started working for Uber a short time later, and that Uber’s self-driving technology looked suspiciously like their own, was enough to prompt Waymo to suspect that Levandowski leaving Google to start his own company, which was then bought by Uber, was all part of an elaborate plot for Uber to steal trade secrets from Google. Continue reading ›

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The already expensive battle to acquire engineers with knowledge and experience in the field of self-driving cars just cost Uber another estimated $245 million, not including the money they spent defending their legal battle against Waymo for a year before the parties agreed on a settlement.

As engineers get closer to developing the technology necessary to produce viable self-driving automobiles, it’s becoming increasingly clear that, not only is self-driving technology the future, it is going to be a very lucrative future. It has driven up the costs of engineers in the field to unprecedented heights, but Uber may have topped them all by spending $590 million to buy an entire self-driving truck company from Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer. The terms of the agreement were for Levandowski to receive an additional $250 million in Uber stock if Otto reached certain performance goals, but before that could happen, Levandowski was fired from Uber for refusing to cooperate in the investigation into the alleged stolen Google files.

Levandowski and Travis Kalanick, the founder and former CEO of Uber, had allegedly been hanging out and brainstorming ideas for self-driving technology even when Levandowski was still working for Google. Kalanick recently testified in court that he had wanted to hire Levandowski, but Levandowski wanted to break out on his own. Continue reading ›

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There’s nothing illegal about a high-level employee moving from one company to a competing company (especially in California, which bans non-compete agreements). But businesses do still have the right to protect their trade secrets and legitimate business interests in the form of confidential information, especially when it comes to experimental technology.

So although Anthony Levandowski was perfectly within his rights to quit his position developing self-driving technology at Waymo (a division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet) to go work for Uber to develop similar technology, that’s not what Levandowski wanted to do, according to Travis Kalanick’s testimony in a recent corporate lawsuit.

Kalanick, the founder and former CEO of Uber, recently testified in court that he regularly hosted what he called a “jam sesh” at his home. He would invite other Uber executives to his house and they would brainstorm business ideas together. Kalanick testified that Levandowski would sometimes attend these jam sessions while he was still employed by Google. Kalanick said he had wanted to hire Levandowski, but Levandowski wanted to break out on his own and form his own company. Kalanick then came up with a solution in which he could get Levandowski to work for him while still allowing Levandowski to feel as though he had the freedom he wanted. Continue reading ›

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While some federal courts have been making it easier for employers to use more expansive non-compete agreements to shackle their workers, some states are working to make it more difficult. California already has a blanket ban on non-compete agreements, including those signed in states where they are legal. Now Pennsylvania might be the next state to join California’s worker-friendly approach.

Pennsylvania’s legislators recently introduced a new house bill, titled the “Freedom to Work Act,” which would ban almost all non-compete agreements.

The proposed law, as it is currently written, is not quite as restrictive as California’s ban. Pennsylvania’s proposed Act defines a non-compete agreement as any agreement between an employer and their worker that is designed to prevent the worker from seeking employment with another company, although the Act would enforce non-compete agreements in certain situations, including the sale of a business or the dissolution of a partnership or LLC. The Act also would not apply to non-compete agreements in existence prior to the time the Act is made into law, although it would prohibit the renewal of any such agreements. Continue reading ›

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Many non-compete agreements are included in employment contracts merely as a precaution. While employers reserve the right to sue workers for violating any of the terms of their non-compete agreements, few companies actually follow through on the threat if/when an employee violates their contract.

But one fitness company did decide to exercise its right to sue a former employee who allegedly violated the terms of his employment contract by starting his own club within three miles of the fitness club location he had been managing for his former employer.

The former employee, Jason Voges, started a fitness club of his own, Island Life Fitness, LLC. Voges founded the new club with his wife, Crystal, a few months after his employment with Anytime Fitness ended. Anytime Fitness, a franchise of Fitness Group, LLC, sued Voges, pointing out his contract allows him to seek employment with a rival fitness club ten miles away from any one of Fitness Group’s locations. Continue reading ›

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