Category Archives: Legislation

The Massachusetts legislature has begun a new, two-year session, and with it comes a pared-down approach to reforming the law of noncompetition agreements in the Commonwealth.  The two principal sponsors of past reform legislation, Senator (previously Rep.) Will Brownsberger and Rep. Lori Erhlich, explained in a recent Boston Business Journal piece that they are introducing a new bill [...]

Yesterday, I attended a panel presentation at the Boston Bar Association on the status of noncompete legislative reform in Massachusetts. As Michael Rosen has discussed in numerous prior posts on this blog, recently there has been a push to limit noncompetes in order to increase employee mobility and productivity, led by state Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D-Marblehead) [...]

As the Massachusetts legislative session comes to a close on July 31, there has been a renewed push for a bill that would “reform” current Massachusetts common law by placing various procedural and substantive restrictions on employee noncompetition agreements.  (Discussion of the proposed legislation and ongoing debate can be found here and here and multiple earlier posts.)  One of the bill’s sponsors, [...]

At my last Massachusetts Bar Association (MBA) Civil Litigation Section meeting, I learned about a bill to adopt the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) that has been floating around the Massachusetts Legislature since late January. Forms of the UTSA have been adopted in 46 states in addition to the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the [...]

Many thanks to Brad MacDougall of Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM) for sending along the text of the revised noncompete bill, which was filed last week.  The new bill is here.  As David Frank of Mass. Lawyers Weekly mentioned in his recent blog post and Lawyers Weekly reported last October, AIM had exerted pressure to [...]

As confirmed here, a bill to reform the law of noncompetition agreements in Massachusetts, which died in the 2010 legislative session, was re-filed on January 19, 2011.  Rep. Will Brownsberger, one of the sponsors of the compromise legislation in 2010, stated on his website prior to the re-filing that it would "look like the last generation of the bill [...]

The effort to substantially alter the landscape for noncompete agreements in Massachusetts via legislation has stalled. After advancing out of committee in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the compromise legislation (described here) was included in an economic development bill with many other provisions and proposed amendments relating to business issues in the Commonwealth. As has been reported [...]

As reported here on the website of Rep. William Brownsberger: legislation to revise the law of non-competition agreements in Massachusetts took a step forward this week. The Committee on Labor and Human Resources reported out a bill with a favorable recommendation.  Here is the new draft.  It is essentially the bill that Representatives Ehrlich and Brownsberger worked out [...]

The next round in the ongoing debate about noncompetes in Massachusetts has arrived.  As described here, a public hearing on various forms of pending noncompete legislation will take place before the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on October 7, between 10:30 am and 1:00 pm.  The location is Room A-2 of the State House.  The [...]

For those who have been following this blog’s discussion of the ongoing debate about noncompetes in Massachusetts and recently introduced legislation seeking to prohibit such restrictions, this site is a useful resource on the subject.  Thanks to Caroline Huang for bringing it to my attention.  It contains the text of proposed legislation and background information on noncompetition agreements in Massachusetts.  [...]

As expected (and first discussed here), Massachusetts Rep. Will Brownsberger has introduced a bill that would abolish the use of noncompete agreements in Massachusetts, at least in the employment and independent contractor contexts.  Here is the text of the proposed law: AN ACT TO PROHIBIT RESTRICTIVE EMPLOYMENT COVENANTS Section 1. Section 19 of Chapter 149 of the General [...]

Thanks to Wade Roush for bringing to my attention his article posted yesterday in Xconomy, a very informative web publication focused on the tech sectors in Boston and on the west coast.  As with this blog, Xconomy has been closely following what I have described as the Massachusetts noncompete "debate" over the past year or so.  (Scroll down to [...]

I would not be the first to observe that the Massachusetts legislature sometimes acts in strange and mysterious ways. It has been known to surprise even those of us who think we are paying attention to such things with unexpected employment-related legislation. The very significant amendment in 2004 to the Massachusetts Independent Contractor Law (.pdf) is [...]