Monthly Archives: March 2013

Yesterday, I went to a continuing legal education class sponsored by the Boston Bar Association titled “Traps for the Unwary: Drafting Non-Competes and Other Post-Employment Restrictions.”  The class focused on drafting agreements, but naturally there was a lot of discussion about enforcing them as well.  Among the many useful things I learned is that, in noncompete litigation, “you always want to be the good guy.”  Judge Janet Sanders of the Massachusetts Superior Court Business Litigation Session said that noncompete cases (and similar cases dealing with non-solicitation provisions) are so fact-intensive that judges can often be outcome determinative in their decision-making,… More

            I’ve written many times about the significant split in circuit courts’ interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which affects whether an employer can sue an employee for violating computer use restrictions, usually embodied in a confidentiality agreement or company IT policy, when an employee downloads confidential information he is permitted to access but then takes that information to a competitor.  The debate centers on when an employee “exceeds authorized access” under the text of the CFAA. … More

As reported in the Boston Business Journal, this week at the annual meeting of the Mass. Technology Leadership Council, Governor Deval Patrick again expressed his view that non-competition agreements restrain jobs and that arguments in favor of eliminating them altogether are “compelling.” At the same time, the Governor acknowledged that he knows there are technology executives who support continued enforcement of these agreements. As reported on this blog,… More