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Non-Compete Agreements

BY Chad W. Moeller
September 26, 2013

The increasingly transient nature of today's workforce has prompted many employers to turn to non-competition agreements to protect their businesses. Non-competition clauses, and other such restrictive covenants (e.g., non-solicitation clauses), are contract terms designed to prevent employees from engaging in a wide variety of competitive, and potentially destructive, behavior. This includes working for a competitor, misappropriating or disclosing a company's trade secrets and/or other confidential information, and soliciting the employer's valued customers and employees.

These types of restrictive covenants can be invaluable to employers and promote business growth, as they allow companies to train employees and give them access to confidential information while minimizing the risk that a disloyal employee freely will disclose it to a competitor later. However, enforcing such restrictions against a disloyal former employee can be a challenging process, as the laws governing non-compete clauses vary from state to state, and may impose conflicting standards of enforceability.

In Illinois, the standard for restrictive covenant enforcement was addressed recently in Reliable Fire Equipment Company v. Arredondo, a landmark decision by the state's Supreme Court in 2011, and just recently followed by a related, and controversial, opinion by the Illinois Appellate Court in Fifield v. Premier Dealer Services, Inc.

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