When hiring people that will hold critical positions in your business, you may find it necessary to establish some parameters that protect you against these people learning from you and taking their learnings to another company and using those against you. A noncompete agreement may be able to help you in these situations.
Elements of a noncompete agreement
As explained by Forbes, there are many facets of a noncompete agreement and understanding the intention of the contract is important. One reason for engaging in a noncompete agreement is to place some limitation on an employee’s future work to the extent that they are prevented from creating an unfair competitive situation against you. Another reason you may use a noncompete is to protect sensitive information from being leaked outside of your company.
Terms and enforceability
When drafting a noncompete agreement, you will want to give careful consideration to the terms that you stipulate so that they are deemed reasonable and, therefore, enforceable should you ever need to enforce your contract. Contracts should not be in effect for excessively long periods of time, like 10 years. The geographic and industry scope of the contract should also be kept focused and somewhat limited so as not to bar a person from ever working again once they leave your company.
If you would like to learn more about the situations in which a noncompete agreement may be necessary and beneficial for your business and how to create the right type of contract, please feel free to visit the noncompete agreement page of our Florida contract and business law website.
