Last summer, the New York State legislature made waves when it passed a bill that effectively would have banned noncompete agreements. New York’s Governor vetoed that bill in late December 2023. This year, however, it is expected that the legislature will consider, and maybe pass, a less draconian bill that the Governor may be more likely sign. Instead of an outright ban, such a bill might limit the use of noncompetes by, for example, prohibiting noncompetes only for certain types of employees, such as low wage earners.
While the business and legal communities await the state ...
In a bombshell ruling last year that upended longstanding Delaware law, the Delaware Chancery Court ruled in Ainslie v. Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P., 2023 WL 106924 (Del. Ch. Jan. 4, 2023), that forfeiture-for-competition clauses, under which departing employees must forfeit certain long-term incentive compensation if they join a competitor, are akin to post-employment noncompetes and other restraints of trade. As a result, the Chancery Court determined these forfeiture provisions should be analyzed under a reasonableness standard rather than the employee choice doctrine ...
Our colleague attorney Phillip Antablin recently joined a roundtable discussion hosted by Russell Beck, regarding California’s expanded anti-restrictive covenants laws under Business and Professions Code Section 16600.
Phillip joined as many as 50 restrictive covenant, trade secrets, and employee mobility lawyers from around the country to discuss:
- the amendments to Business and Professions Code Section 16600 the new notice requirement to current and former employees that their restrictive covenant is void;
- Section 16600’s application as a whole, including Section ...
The Clash famously asked “Should I stay, or should I go?” on their 1982 album, Combat Rock, and with recent attacks on non-competes at both the state and federal level, some employers are imposing additional costs on employees who take advantage of an employer’s training opportunities only to leave and join a competitor. So-called “stay or pay” clauses, or training-repayment-agreement-provisions (TRAPs), typically require an employee to pay the employer the cost the employer incurred to train the employee if the employee leaves their employment within a certain ...
Blog Editors
Recent Updates
- Spilling Secrets Podcast: FTC Nixes Non-Competes Nationwide—Now What?
- Q&A on the FTC's Final Rule Banning Post-Employment Non-Competes
- Chamber of Commerce and Others Swiftly File Lawsuits Seeking to Enjoin and Vacate the FTC’s Noncompete Rule
- The FTC Finally Pulls the Trigger on a Final Noncompete Rule, with a Few Changes, but Remains Unlikely to Ever Hit Its Target
- Spilling Secrets Podcast: Navigating Physician Non-Compete Litigation