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On April 3, 2018, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division announced the first no-poaching antitrust settlement of the Trump Administration. Previously, senior DOJ officials had made public comments indicating that the DOJ intends to aggressively police no-poaching agreements, including via criminal prosecutions. According to the DOJ, the antitrust conspiracy involved two of the world’s largest … Continue reading
Let’s beat the same drum but only this time, take it a step further: Widespread Ignorance About Non-Competes & Antitrust Certain practitioners and judges have absolutely no understanding of the antitrust principles upon which non-compete law is based. True story: I was in a hearing in front a federal judge who I will not … Continue reading
In 2014, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated a series of antitrust actions and transferred them to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The Middle District of Florida now presides over the multidistrict litigation entitled In re Auto Body Shop Antitrust Litigation, which includes cases originally filed in fifteen … Continue reading
In the past few months, we have seen a number of decisions involving non-compete issues in the grocery industry— from appellate courts, no less. That trend continues. This case comes out of the Eighth Circuit and involves some of my former colleagues from Boies, Schiller & Flexner. C&S and SuperValu are the two largest grocery … Continue reading
Strangely enough, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida has become a hotbed of non-compete litigation. That may simply be a product of national trends: As Dow Jones recently reported, companies are becoming increasingly aggressive on the non-compete front. More and more companies are requiring employees to sign non-compete, non-disclosure and … Continue reading
A recent non-compete dispute in Florida raises questions about the concept of legitimate business interests under Florida law. Until October, prominent Florida chef Domenica Macchia ran the kitchen at a St. Petersburg restaurant called Three Birds Tavern. After leaving Three Birds last fall, Macchia became the chef at another local restaurant called Beak’s Old Florida. … Continue reading
Over the past two years, we have heard an endless stream of pundits, analysts and lobbyists weigh in on the possible antitrust case against Google. The most outrageous such commentary came from Thomas Barnett, a partner at Covington and Burling and lobbyist for Microsoft and other Google competitors. When interviewed for a CNET article, Barnett … Continue reading
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission issued a final decision approving a consent order that will invalidate the non-compete agreements of ten cardiologists who are terminating their employment with Renown Health in Reno, Nevada. The move has been expected since late this summer, when the parties reached a tentative agreement on the matter. The situation … Continue reading
On Friday, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against eBay accusing the company of entering a non-compete pact with software maker Intuit. Under the terms of the alleged secret deal, both companies agreed to refrain from recruiting or hiring each other’s employees. According to the DOJ, both companies aggressively policed their respective workforces to … Continue reading
The Zynga saga continues. In October, Zynga – the company that makes popular Facebook games like FarmVille – filed a lawsuit against a former employee, Allan Patmore. In short, Zynga alleges that Patmore left the company, took a ton of confidential information and trade secrets with him then went to work for a competitor Kixeye. … Continue reading
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