Almost every good employee agreement for professionals includes some form of non-compete clause or a whole separate non-compete agreement. These agreements restrict an employee’s ability to take the skills and inside information they have gathered while working with a business and transfer that to a competing business. Sales personal, researchers, and those in product development are subject to non-competes. These agreements have some serious limitations, however, and need to be well drafted for the specific employment situation and industry in order to be valid.
Minnesota courts tend to uphold non-compete agreements if they are reasonable and fair. This generally means that they can only be for a limited length of time and that the geographic scope of the agreement must make sense for the business. A doctor practicing in one town cannot be precluded from moving across the state and continuing their profession.
Non-competes often cover professionals including doctors, accountants, and many other professions.. These professionals generally have a high level of skill and income and a group of dedicated clients who will follow them and many professional organizations tend to set ethical standards that are designed to allow clients to choose their practitioner, regardless of their location or employer, making non-competes difficult to draft and enforce.
A similar drafting problem arises when dealing with employees of large tech companies whose business can cover the entire nation, if not the world. Particular care should be taken in drafting their non-competes such that they can be enforced. A non-compete agreement that completely prohibits a professional, whether a lawyer or a programmer, from using their skillset at all for a period of time is not likely to be enforced. Rather, the agreement should take into account the business they’re employed in and limit the non-compete in geographic scope to just the area where it works or in time.
Seeking the help of an experienced lawyer can save you countless headaches when employees decide to leave or when you hire an employee who is subject to a non-compete. Call Virtus Law Firm at 612.888.1000 or email us at info@virtuslaw.com. Our attorneys will take the time to understand your business, the employee’s role, the skills they have, the information they have access to, and draft a non-compete that a court will uphold to protect your business and your assets.