No no. However, if you do not accept a no-competition agreement, you may lose your potential job (or your current job) if your current employer now wants you to sign an agreement that did not yet apply to your job.) If the employer is not willing to waive the agreement or change the form or content to better suit you, you may not be hired or you will be fired if you are already employed. California companies are tasked with preventing their employees from withdrawing and working for their competitors, or creating businesses that compete directly with the employer. As a result, many companies require their workers to sign employment contracts with conditional post-employment non-competition clauses, which must require workers to keep it secret. California courts have generally treated clauses limiting client demand as non-compete agreements, meaning those clauses would not be applicable. However, the courts, both nationally and federally, have supported the section 16600 trade secrecy exception and have also authorized the application of non-requests for trade secrets. As noted in the previous question, the length of time considered appropriate is generally analyzed in conjunction with the other factors. For example, if the non-competition agreement is used to protect valuable information, the appropriate duration is the length of time the information has value. 3. Is it legal to refuse me a job simply because I refuse to sign a non-compete agreement? Appeal courts in California have ruled that family judges have the option of ordering non-compete prohibitions if they are necessary to properly allocate marital property in a divorce.
In one case, for example, a judge assigned the husband a business owned by a man and a woman. The judge also ordered the woman not to compete with the cases for a period of five years. The non-competition clause was motivated by the fact that the woman attempted to harm the business during the dissolution of the business. The courts are very reluctant to impose a non-compete clause so broad that it prevents an employee from working. In addition, there are courts that have relied on state constitutions to limit the ability of employers to prevent a worker from working. If you have questions about restrictive agreements or non-compete agreements that are specifically provided for by California law, you should discuss your concerns with a California labor law or a California lawyer who is not competing. Even the “inevitable doctrine of disclosure” is generally not sufficient to result in the application of a non-competition agreement. In other words, even if an employer reasonably believes that a former employee will use confidential information from the employer`s business in the course of a new activity, the former employer cannot rely on that belief as the basis for the application of a non-competition agreement.
Instead, the employer can only assert a right if the worker is actually abusing confidential information.