The Virginia Business Litigation Blog
It happens to every business eventually. A rogue employee defects to a competitor and immediately starts soliciting the former employer’s customers and clients, using the former employer’s trade secrets or other confidential commercial information against it. Although non-compete and non-solicitation agreements are generally disfavored in Virginia, most Virginia judges nevertheless recognize that employers have a legitimate business interest in protecting themselves from competition by former employees who possess sensitive information and will, in appropriate circumstances, compel former employees to honor their contractual commitments. This blog post provides a brief overview of the process involved in obtaining such relief from the legal system, divided into two basic steps.
Step One: Write an enforceable noncompete agreement.
The most common mistake employers make in their efforts to prevent unfair competition is to present their employees with overbroad, overreaching employment agreements. Many businesses, knowing that 99% of new employees will sign whatever piece of paper you put in front of them, cannot resist the temptation to draft their noncompete agreements in a way that is completely one-sided in favor of the employer. They might draft agreements that prohibit the employee from contacting any of its customers for 10 years after leaving the company, or that prohibit former employees from taking any kind of job within a 500-mile radius of the employer’s office. When an employer goes too far in its efforts to secure loyalty by forcing its employees to sign unreasonable contracts, those efforts can backfire by causing the contracts to become unenforceable as a matter of law.