I support that law. What a waste of talent if bright stars in advancing fields are snuffed out!
Interestingly, I once heard it mentioned (in a business roundtable meeting) that this was one of the "anti-business" laws which must be strongly fought against. You are right though, just because there is precedent does not stop companies and their lawyers from inserting such clauses into their terms of employment, most of which are non-negotiable for engineers. The question is, how many individuals can afford going to court, both in terms of cost as well as time? And courts are unpredictable, so you might even lose and be destroyed financially. Thus, specific laws codifying such employee's rights are great. Perhaps such "anti business" laws played a part in the high-tech buildup in CA. Peter On 06/28/12, Jim Lux<jim...@earthlink.net> wrote: On 6/28/12 6:38 AM, Peter Gottlieb wrote: > Very true, and in some cases (Texas case) a judge ruled that an employee that > left a firm can never work in that same field again for the rest of their > life due to both positive and negative knowledge. > Not in California, where such agreements are specifically prohibited by law. And, for that matter, the later legal strategy calling out "inevitable disclosure" (that is, that if you work in the same field you will inevitably disclose something that is trade secret) has been held invalid in a variety of courts. This doesn't stop company A from threatening to sue Company B who wants to hire someone from Company A, but it turns the threat into nothing, if Company B's lawyer writes a nice letter citing the half dozen or so cases to Company A's lawyer. In effect telling A, "pound sand with your stupid extortion" It *is* still effective in the old boys network.. executive from company A mentions to executive from company B, "you know, if you hire good ol' Bob, it could get sticky, legally. You sure you want to take that on." Of such are things like illegal anti-poaching agreements made and of such are consent decrees issued. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
