> But in a world of IP ... it's a different story.
If the employee violates the IP then sue him for that. No need for non-compete agreements. If you're worried the employee will steal your clients then you're not giving your clients a good deal at first place, and the employee shouldn't be prevented from working with your clients. This is a free market. Non compete agreements are completely anti-freedom of both enterprise and work.
> Company ABC brings you in, trains you on their know-how and core IP, which took a lot of struggle, $, and R&D to create - then you leave, go to a competitor, and effectively communicate and give away ABC Corps. most valuable asset.
Then the burden of proof should lie with the previous company, there shouldn't be any possibility of preemptive clause within the former contract. If it's clear corporate secrets were leaked then sue. If you don't want your employee go work somewhere else then compensate him, that's the problem here , most of the time there is no compensation.
It doesn't matter how much R&D was created. That's the role of patents to deal with that thing.
"It doesn't matter how much R&D was created. That's the role of patents to deal with that thing."
I'm beginning to think none of you have ever worked in companies that actually produce IP.
First off - that's not what patents are for. Patents protect publicly known information - not trade secrets. And they don't do it very well. There are very few things you can defend with a patent.
What companies are concerned with is 'trade secrets' and 'know how' - and it's a serious thing.
"Then the burden of proof should lie with the previous company, there shouldn't be any possibility of preemptive clause within the former contract."
If you work at DWAVE for 5 years and learn everything you know about Quantum Computing there - and go to Google to work on Quantum Computing - then there is basically a 100% chance that you are passing on 'know how' and 'trade secrets' - otherwise - Google would not hire you.
Your comments about customers etc. are irrelevant with respect to IP issues.
If you work for ABC corp and they make a 'sales automation tool' - and you go off and build your own 'sales automation tool' - then fine. It's not about IP or trade secrets. You can do as you like.
But for other types of things, no way. You work at Nuance on Speech recognition - then you leave and build a nearly identical speech recognition system? That's probably IP theft.
There would not be any technology if IP could not be protected in some reasonable way.
I'm not suggesting that many of these contracts are crazy - and that there can be absurd limitations and weird corner cases - of course it's very tricky - but companies deserve the right to protect their IP in some manner.
> If you work at DWAVE for 5 years and learn everything you know about Quantum Computing there - and go to Google to work on Quantum Computing - then there is basically a 100% chance that you are passing on 'know how' and 'trade secrets' - otherwise - Google would not hire you.
Exactly. The views on this are so twisted in US. People actualy believe that its the company giving away everything. Truth is if youve worked on quantum computers for five years youve generated so much of this know how. Youve invested ideas, energy, time - its you givin away knowledge not company.
Also, was this that employees first job? Certainly he gained experience somewhere else first. Why should the first company benefit from that? It's the circle of life.
If that information is key to the nature and success of a product, then it's called 'know how' and it's both legally and rationally protectable.
You people need to grow up and grasp that fact that once you go to a company and they teach you what they have spent $100 Million dollars on developing, that you cannot walk across the street and spill the beans on 80% of the materiality of that R&D which happens to be such details.
It's people like you that have made the White House address this problem.
All you care about is the profitability of the company, and you think forcing employees to sign away their ability to work in their field is an acceptable solution.
People are getting hired for 3-month contracts and then getting sued when they find a similar job a year later. People are getting laid off and then getting sued by the companies that laid them off for getting a job at a competitor.
Fuck that. The job market needs competition, not a focus on raw profits above all else.
If your employee leaves your company, joins your competitor, and then leaks your trade secrets, then sue them for that. Don't sue them for even getting a job at your competitor - that doesn't mean that they are leaking secrets.
And if you think that your employees are so untrustworthy that getting hired by a competitor is a guaranteed leak of trade secrets, then that probably explains why you are so terrified that they will leave you to find a new job. You're a terrible employer, and they would be better off with a different job.
But let's face it, you don't have any employees, because you aren't an employer. You're a "temporarily embarrassed" entrepreneur who is already convinced that someone will try to steal that million-dollar idea you haven't had yet. Well, I wouldn't work for you, nor should anyone else, so good luck with that idea once you have it.
There's clearly a gray area. Knowledge does get transferred when people move from company to company. If someone developed experience in, say, running retail marketing campaigns for millennials at company X (to remove this discussion from the technical domain) and they take a job at competing company Y, OF COURSE they're bringing over both know how and negative know how developed at their prior employer.
That said, it doesn't mean that it's either ethical or necessarily legal for them to go to company Y and immediately do a core dump of every marketing campaign they ran and what the results were. But there's a fuzzy line between doing that and saying "Oh, millennials really respond well to this sort of language, but be careful not to say this."
> If you work for ABC corp and they make a 'sales automation tool' - and you go off and build your own 'sales automation tool' - then fine. It's not about IP or trade secrets. You can do as you like.
Unless you have a noncompete clause. That's exactly why they're a problem. You can't develop your professional skills. When you leave, you have to start from scratch in a different industry.
"Unless you have a noncompete clause. That's exactly why they're a problem. You can't develop your professional skills. When you leave, you have to start from scratch in a different industry."
Buddy - I'm saying there should be no 'non compete' clause in that situation. Obviously - there's no basis for it because there is no IP involved. Which is a case of over-aggressive application of these protocols.
> but companies deserve the right to protect their IP
Sure. What I have in my head isn't the companies IP though, it's my experience.
"IP" is often confused with "the collective experience of your employees". IP is physical artifacts such as code, drawings, patents etc. The memory of having written that code is not part of the IP, nor is the capability of doing it again in a fraction of the time.
> Again - 100% false. A lot of 'what is in your head' is the IP of the company you worked for.
I consider most of it "experience". How would you draw the line between what is "experience" and what is "IP"?
> you people seem to accept that NDA's are valid.
> 'NDA' is valid, means you accept that 'what is in your head' can be the property of the company
Well it rather means that I can't disclose things to certain people at certain times. I accept that e.g. for unreleased products and other secrets.
> to keep information about the company private - indefinitely.
Not sure what that means? If I work for ABC corp to develop over 10 years some advanced tech for ad targeting, and I have a non-compete that doesn't let me go to google for a year. For that full year they pay me full salary. That is the non-compete. I accept that (only with full salary). While at ABC, I had an NDA. That's cool.
After that year I can clean room implement something similar. I might have to avoid making the exact same system I did at ABC corp if there are IP issues such as patents. Note that this IP (patents) is not secret. I don't necessarily agree with software patents of most kinds however.
I develop the similar system at google in 1 year. That's what experience does: I take none of the dead ends I did at ABC corp. That's why google can pay me a load of money: I have experience. Is that experience in large part the SAME as ABC corps "IP"? yes. Of course.
Do they "own" all of that experience? No. They still have their product. They own that. Google will have a product too, which they own. I wrote both.
An NDA and a non-compete are not the same thing. What you are describing is an NDA. It is quite possible for someone to change jobs, even in the same industry, and still abide by an NDA.
If the employee violates the IP then sue him for that. No need for non-compete agreements. If you're worried the employee will steal your clients then you're not giving your clients a good deal at first place, and the employee shouldn't be prevented from working with your clients. This is a free market. Non compete agreements are completely anti-freedom of both enterprise and work.
> Company ABC brings you in, trains you on their know-how and core IP, which took a lot of struggle, $, and R&D to create - then you leave, go to a competitor, and effectively communicate and give away ABC Corps. most valuable asset.
Then the burden of proof should lie with the previous company, there shouldn't be any possibility of preemptive clause within the former contract. If it's clear corporate secrets were leaked then sue. If you don't want your employee go work somewhere else then compensate him, that's the problem here , most of the time there is no compensation.
It doesn't matter how much R&D was created. That's the role of patents to deal with that thing.