Noncompete Agreements are Gone But You Can Still Protect Your Business

As you may have heard, the federal government, through the Department of Labor, recently passed a rule essentially outlawing the use of noncompete agreements. The rule even goes so far as to invalidate already existing noncompete agreements.

And while the rule may or may not stick around, depending on the result of numerous court challenges, if you are a business seeking to protect its essential information, there are other things that you can do, to protect your valuable trade secrets, other than preventing someone from working for a competitor through a noncompete agreement.

Confidentiality Agreements and Trade Secrets

You have a right to designate company information as being confidential, and to require that employees keep this information confidential, both while, and after, they are employed by you.

Regardless of where these employees may work when they are done working for you, they still can be bound by—and sued for breaching—a contract wherein they promised not to use or disseminate valuable confidential information or trade secrets.

Put another way: you may no longer be able to stop employees from working for a competitor, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prohibit them from using, disseminating, or profiting from information they gathered while they were working for you.

You should, to the extent possible and without revealing any proprietary information, state in your contracts what trade secrets you are protecting or guarding from dissemination.

What’s confidential can be, but doesn’t need to be a trade secret. So, for example, an employee can be prohibited from sharing or using information about your company’s policies, procedures or techniques, even if those things aren’t technically trade secrets.

Nonsolicitation Agreements

Another common contract is the nonsolicitation agreement. A nonsolicitation agreement can restrict a former employer from not only soliciting, but from even contacting, your business’ former clients or customers—and even your current business’ employees.

Return of Property and Information

You also can and should include in your employment contracts provisions that make any and all property that the employee gathers, accesses or creates while employed by you, the property of you or your company. Your contract can and should require the return of all documents, and destruction of any duplicate documents.

These documents don’t have to be confidential trade secrets. They are your company’s property, and you have a right to dictate what the (former) employee can and cannot do with them when his or her employment with your company ends.

Company Devices

With the end of the noncompete agreement, this may be a good time to consider company devices for remote employees, which can allow you some monitoring rights, as well as the ability to take steps to ensure that your company’s private information is not being shared with others, more so than you would be able to do when remote employees use their own, personal devices for work related activities.

We can help you protect your business and its confidential information. Call our Fort Lauderdale business lawyers at Sweeney Law P.A. at 954-440-3993 today.

Source:

dmlp.org/legal-guide/florida/trade-secrets-law-florida