Whether you are hiring a new employee or entering in a contract with your vendor or supplier, if you are planning on giving these persons access to your business’ confidential information, such as customer lists, financial information, proprietary training materials, etc., you should make sure that the person you are sharing it with is not going to take that information and use it to compete against your business. There are several tools available to business owners to make sure that this does not happen.
When properly drafted, the following contractual provisions will serve to protect a business owner from unfair competition by a former employee or business partner:
- Non-compete clause. This clause prevents current employees or business partners from joining or forming a competing business after the end of their employment or business relationship with your company. It is enforceable in Texas when certain conditions are met.
- Non-solicitation of clients clause. This clause prevents current employees or business partners from taking the company’s clients with them after their employment or business relationship with that company ends.
- Non-solicitation of employees a.k.a anti-raiding clause. This clause prevents current employees or business partners from poaching their former employer’s or business partner’s employees after the end of their employment or business relationship.
- Non-disclosure clause. This clause prohibits employees or business partners from using or disclosing confidential information that a company shared with them during their employment or business relationship.
To be enforceable, each clause has to be drafted specifically for your business. There are some contract clauses that stay the same no matter what the substance of the contract or the business is – these are not those clauses.
A lot of business owners will adopt a friend’s or a former employer’s non-compete and non-solicitation agreements for their own use, or copy an agreement they found online. However, those agreements usually work only until a company attempts to enforce them, leaving a business owner exposed to unfair competition at the precise moment when it needs the protection the most.
These copycat restrictive covenants often fail because a company that attempts to enforce them in court must show why a particular geographic area or a specified time period is reasonable for a particular employee, and explain exactly what is included in the definition of “confidential information” included in the non-disclosure clause. This is virtually impossible to do if the agreement that the company is seeking to enforce was catered to a different company’s business, with different types of confidential information, and different employee structure.
Leiza litigates non-compete and trade secrets lawsuits on behalf of COMPANIES and EMPLOYEES in a variety of industries, and knows how such disputes typically play out for both parties. If you need assistance with a non-compete or a trade secret misappropriation situation, contact Leiza for a confidential consultation at Leiza.Dolghih@GodwinLewis.com or (214) 939-4458.
