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A very important decision out of the Western District of Michigan touches upon several important aspects of non-compete litigation and particularly non-compete defense. Not surprisingly, the case pits Stryker against a former sales rep. Stryker, as many folks know, is notorious for aggressively enforcing its non-compete agreements. Let’s take a look: Christopher Ridgeway was hired … Continue reading
A recent non-compete case out of Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals deals with the issue of restrictive covenants and independent clauses. Let’s take a look: In the Trial Court Defendants Dale Denton and David West were employees of Richland Towers, Inc. They signed employment agreements with Richland that contained, among other restrictive covenants, non-compete … Continue reading
A strange case out of California: A company called Zora Analytics contracted with a company called AnanSys Software for the placement of temporary software engineers. AnanSys then subcontracted out the job to a company called Cigniti. AnanSys made Cigniti sign a software consulting agreement, which contained a non-compete/non-disclosure agreement. Cigniti then assigned one of its … 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
Call it a trend. A number of recent cases from across the country suggest that courts are pushing back against overzealous attempts to enforce non-compete agreements against salespeople. One of the latest examples comes out of the Illinois. In September 2010, Rodger Reaume began working in sales for Fisher/Unitech, a major reseller of computer animated … Continue reading
Devicor Medical Products, a major player in the medical device industry, has lost its bid to prevent a former employee from working for Hologic, a company with divisions that compete against Devicor in the breast biopsy product market. In June 2005, Keith Reed began work as a sales representative for Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Devicor’s predecessor. In … Continue reading
Fort Lauderdale-based MAKO Surgical Corporation has filed a lawsuit against a former employee, Jeffrey Gellman, and his new company, Blue Belt Technologies, Inc., alleging the parties conspired to steal MAKO’s confidential information and clients. MAKO is a company that is principally engaged in the design, manufacture and sale of robotic surgical systems. These systems use … 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
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
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
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