As you will see, I have changed the format of my monthly wrap up post in two ways. First, I am going to start including links to noteworthy decisions that I come across or are forwarded to me. Unfortunately, since neither I nor other bloggers writing in this space can cover everything, this will be a useful feature for those practicing in this area. Second, I am going to provide more commentary on some posts and cases, in the hope of creating further dialogue on many trade secret and non-compete issues. Given the hot button nature of some of these issues, I am going to share my thoughts, for whatever they are worth. Now, on to posts and links from the last month:
Legislative Developments
- Last week, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy and Ron Wyden announced their intention to introduce the Workers Mobility Act (WMA) that would abolish non-competes throughout the United States. As many of you will recall, Senator Murphy previously introduced a similar bill, the Mobility and Opportunity for Vulnerability Employees Act (MOVE) but that bill stalled on the Senate floor. Russell Beck has a post with a link to the House and Senate bills, along with his well-reasoned concerns about the breadth and scope of the bills.
- A blog post about legislation over non-competes wouldn’t be complete if there wasn’t some mention of some activity in Massachusetts. Key features of the latest bill under serious consideration would limit non-competes to 12 months (unless the employee stole trade secrets or breached his fiduciary duty) and finally adopt the UTSA. For more details, see Russell Beck’s post in his Fair Competition Blog.
- Idaho (repealing its recent changes in 2016) and Utah (restricting their use against broadcasters) have recently amended their statutes addressing restrictive covenants. See Russell Beck again.
- Colorado has modified its law affecting physician non-competes, carving out protections for physicians treating patients with rare genetic disorders to eliminate any interruption of care for those patients. Peter Greene summarizes the changes in Epstein Becker’s Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility Blog.
