Legislating Noncompetes Away Won't Make a Difference
On March 20 of this year, Mike Rosen, one of our Partners, wrote a post in his blog on the subject of the pending noncompetition legislation in Massachusetts. A lot of folks in the Mass entrepreneurial community have been pushing for a legislative ban on noncompetes similar to that enacted many years ago in California. As Mike notes, legislation on noncompetes in Massachusetts took a step forward. When it, or if, it will pass remains to be seen. I am generally in favor of the legislation. I don’t see how it can hurt the tech community to get rid of this restraint on freedom...
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Foreign nationals in a nonimmigrant status and start-ups
Anyone who has hung around the tech community in Boston, knows that foreign nationals play a huge role in this ecosystem. So it is worth focusing on some of the issues that are particular to foreign nationals. Pritvi Tanwar of our firm has the following to say on this topic: The New England Area and Boston in particular, through its universities and companies, attracts outstanding talent from around the world. It is no surprise then that many international students and other nonimmigrants go on to found or be founding members of companies in and around the Route 128 area. Starting a company...
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More on Noncompete Agreements
As everyone in the tech world knows, California has a statute making employment related noncompete agreements illegal. There is now a movement afoot in to make them illegal in Massachusetts. For reasons that I have noted before, I don’t think making these agreements illegal in Massachusetts will make much, if any, difference in the tech community. On the plus side, it will take one irritating concern off the table for employees seeking to move. But will it really change the east coast tech culture to make it more like Silicon Valley? I don’t think so. Having said that, Paul Boutin...
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Noncompetition Agreements
California has long had a statute making employment related noncompetition agreements illegal. There has been for some time now in Massachusetts a movement to make these agreements illegal here as well. An article in xconomy has this to say on the subject: The alliance, founded last year by partners at Boston’s Spark Capital, argues that the non-compete clauses imposed by many Massachusetts employers stifle innovation by preventing entrepreneurs with good ideas from setting up new businesses that might be seen as competing with those of their former employers. Such agreements are unenforceable in California—a fact that may aggravate brain drain from New...
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What happens to a noncompete when the company shuts its doors?
So here is a question that does not often arise: If a company shuts its doors and just ceases doing business what happens to the employee obligations not to compete? The short answer is that if a company just shuts down and stops doing business without a successor (and that is the key), then it is not in a business against which one can compete so in all probability you can go forth and don’t worry. But, that almost never happens even when it happens. Think about the following:...
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Good housekeeping -- keep your legal house in order
A signature is worth a thousand words “Sally is calling all our customers.” “Does she have a noncompete?” “Yes.’ “Does the noncompete say she can’t call our customers for one year after she leaves?” “Yes” "Ok, let's call the lawyer." Silence... “Did she sign the noncompete?” Silence…....
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There must be millions of NDAs out there, so go figure...
There must be millions of NDAs out there. How controversial can they be? One of my clients and I recently put together a form of NDA that was specifically designed to be easy to sign. We made it simple, one page; we took out a lot of the legal boilerplate; we did not take any aggressive positions (tried to make it completely evenhanded). So far, she has sent it to two companies and neither has signed it. In one case, we got back a revised draft that, in effect, put back all the provisions we took out. All but one of these “new provisions” are...
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