In a decision from March that has only recently garnered media attention, Judge Rya Zobel of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts concluded that a Georgia corporation whose agent allegedly stole trade-secret information from a company’s office in Waltham, Massachusetts could face a lawsuit in Massachusetts. The plaintiff, BGI Inc., is a Massachusetts corporation that makes environmental [...]
Category Archives: Procedural issues
Noncompete Enforced Despite Hiring Company’s Best Efforts to Preserve Former Employer’s Secrets
This decision by a federal judge in Massachusetts enforcing a non-competition agreement is notable for at least two reasons: (1) it presents yet another example of a court in Massachusetts rejecting an argument that California law should govern a non-compete dispute, and (2) it contains an interesting discussion of the hiring company’s substantial but unsuccessful effort to avoid the [...]
Noncompetes and Races to Courthouses
An increasingly common scenario in the world of noncompete enforcement is the so-called “race to the courthouse,” where parallel actions are brought in separate jurisdictions about the same dispute. In one case, the former employer seeks enforcement of the noncompete. In the other, the employee and his or her new employer seek an order declaring [...]
Federal Court Denies Injunction on Procedural and Substantive Grounds
This decision from the United States District Court in Boston, denying a request for a preliminary injunction to enforce non-competition and other restrictive covenants, is notable for a few reasons. First, the federal court in Massachusetts issues relatively few decisions involving requests to enforce noncompete and/or nonsolicitation agreements; a published decision from a federal judge — in [...]