Thursday, December 17, 2020
Although California generally prohibits non-competition agreements, employers have commonly understood that they could prevent an employee and his or her new employer from using former employers’ confidential information. A recent California appellate case, however, has called into question the enforceability of overbroad confidentiality provisions commonly found in employment contracts.
Brown v TGS Management Company, LLC, 57 Cal. App. 5th 303 (4th Distr. 2020). Such provisions must now be carefully scrutinized. If the provisions are not narrowly tailored to comply with Business and Professions Code Section 16600, the employer risks them being later found void as a “de facto” noncompete, potentially violating the Unfair Competition Law, Business and Professions Code, Section 17200.
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December 10, 2020
In the Eastern District of California on Wednesday, Antech Diagnostics Inc. and Dr. Christian Leutenegger filed a complaint against Idexx Laboratories Inc., seeking declaratory relief related to threatened litigation by Idexx over trade secrets and Leutenegger’s contract with Idexx, his former employer.
Leutenegger, a veterinary scientist who develops “quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR or real-time PCR) tests” that primarily can detect and measure infections in animals, joined Idexx in 2006 after postdoctoral work at the University of California-Davis. According to the complaint, he “helped pioneer the use of qPCR tests for diagnostic purposes in veterinary medicine.”