Restrictive covenants and confidential information
China: Securing IP through employee non-compete obligations
IP protection in China requires the implementation of various strategies. The imposition of post-termination non-compete obligations on employees who have access to IP should be considered. We set out below the basic requirements to ensure the effectiveness of post-termination non-compete obligations.
Hong Kong: The year of dragon – key employment cases to note
The year of the dragon was relatively prosperous for employment law[yers] with three high profile employment case decisions (almost unheard of in Hong Kong): In the first of these cases, Cantor Fitzgerald Europe and Cantor Fitzgerald (Hong Kong) Capital Markets … Continue reading
UK: The £1.7 million lunch: requiring leavers under employee incentive plans to comply with restrictive covenants
A recent High Court case provides useful clarity that companies operating employee incentive plans should be able to link the exercise of a discretion to treat a departing participant as a “good leaver” to a condition that the participant has … Continue reading
Restraining ex-employee competition: recent cases highlight key steps for employers
Recent cases have highlighted the importance of employers ensuring that employees’ contracts of employment and job descriptions are kept up to date as their role changes, and that post-termination covenants are revised appropriately. The Court of Appeal has confirmed that … Continue reading
Confidential information cannot be protected by barring order or premature application for injunction
Case law has established that it may be possible to injunct a professional adviser from acting as an expert for one party to a claim when it had previously provided services to the other side and had been given access … Continue reading
Team poaching: doubts over use of forward contracts
The duty of trust and confidence applies to forward contracts; employees may therefore lawfully withdraw from those contracts if the future employer breaches this duty, according to a recent Court of Appeal ruling. However, the Court also expressed reservations as … Continue reading
Confidential information: copying for personal use is breach of duty of good faith
An employee who e-mailed vast numbers of confidential documents to her home computer, purportedly to arm herself for a possible future dispute with her employer, was held to have breached her duty of good faith (even though she had not … Continue reading