Companies don’t really need non-competes anymore. Some companies take an extremely broad interpretation of IP confidentiality, where they consider doing any work in the industry during your lifetime an inevitable confidentiality violation. They argue it would be impossible for you to work elsewhere in this industry during your entire career without violating confidentiality with the technical and business instincts you bring to that domain. It doesn’t require conscious violation on your part (they argue).
So beware and read your employment agreement carefully.
More here https://www.promarket.org/2024/02/08/confidentiality-agreeme...
And this is the insane legal doctrine behind this
I know of several cases where lawyers said "don't bother arguing with them about clause X, just sign it and ignore it".
Asking because it turned out nearly impossible to find a local lawyer to advise on a dispute couple months ago - with 9 out of 10 telling me they only do divorces or real estate or immigration. I was literally calling one by one from a list based on what I believe were relevant search criteria on State Bar website.
If you're in California, try the following; they all know their stuff and aren't in supercostly BigLaw firms (although I think most are BigLaw alumni):
- Betsy Bayha - https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsy-bayha-560107/
- George Grellas - used to post here a lot, not so much recently - https://grellas.com/our-team/george-grellas/
- Sean Hogle - https://www.linkedin.com/in/epiclaw/
- Kyle Mitchell - https://kemitchell.com/