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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
In October of this year, Amazon sued a former employee who had jumped ship and gone to work for Google. Beginning in mid-2010, Daniel Powers served as a vice-president of Amazon’s Web Services division. His principal job in that capacity was to sell Amazon cloud computing services to businesses. Powers left Amazon in June, signed … 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
Early this month, eight employees of the advertising giant Leo Burnett Company simultaneously left the company in the midst of work on a critical project for a major client. Ostensibly, the Leo Burnett Eight have their eyes set on taking that client and making it big on their own. Leo Burnett is one of the … 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
A recent non-compete case out of Missouri raises a number of interesting considerations, including some related to choice of law and conflicts of law. The case is TLC Vision (USA) Corp. v. Freeman, 2012 WL 5398671 (E.D. Mo. Nov. 2, 2012). TLC is basically in the business of running centers that provide vision correction services. … Continue reading
Yesterday evening, at a cigar bar in Fort Lauderdale (shout out to the Florida Cigar Company), I had a discussion with a few gentlemen that touched upon the issues of confidential information, non-compete agreements and computer forensics. One of these gentlemen was in the process of separating from his current employer and starting his own … Continue reading
As an attorney who defends employees in non-compete cases, I am generally critical of how such agreements are used. For one thing, it seems that everybody has a non-compete agreement these days (maids, bartenders, news anchors), even when the facts suggest that such an agreement is unenforceable. And every plaintiff in every non-compete case runs … Continue reading
Not a non-compete case– but it rhymes. The case is Eagle v. Morgan, et al., No. 11-4303 (E.D.Pa. December 22, 2011). The plaintiff, Linda Eagle, co-founded a company called Edcomm, which provides banking and financial training services. Eagle had been with Edcomm since the late 1980’s. In 2008, Eagle created a LinkedIn account. As expected, … Continue reading
In today’s America, non-compete agreements have become ubiquitous. Everybody has one. The wine salesman. The disc jockey. The advertising executive. Even the maid. One of the most obscene examples of the widespread use (and abuse) of non-compete agreements is that of non-competes in the healthcare industry. Many doctors are either driven out of town – … Continue reading
the non-compete blog 