Unfair by definition
You can check out any time you like but you can never compete? A Court of Appeal decision on restrictive covenants by employee shareholders
Restrictive covenants and blue pencils
27 August 2019
Supreme Court sets law on when you can sever wording from restrictive covenants to turn them from unenforceable into enforceable (the 'blue pencil' rule)
Restrictive covenants case – form over substance
July 2017 A case about what I think is quite a silly way for the law to treat restrictive covenants...If you are entering into a business deal with someone, whether they are selling their business to you as part of which you are expecting to take over their customers, or providing services to you as part of which they could get to know your customers, you might well want to add a ‘restraint of trade’ or ‘restrictive covenant’ clause to your contract saying that after your business deal has ended they must not try to steal your customers or compete with your business. There is a whole lot of law about whether such clauses will be enforceable or not...
Restrictive covenants – just another case on not asking for too much from your employees
Nov 2013 As an employer you don’t like training an employee up, giving him access to customers and confidential information, letting him develop relationships with other staff, and paying him a nice salary, only to see him leave you to set up a competing business, take some of your staff with him, solicit your customers using your customer lists and use your confidential information to help him compete with you. So you put restrictive covenants in his employment contract saying he can’t do any of this for a few years after he leaves. Seems fair enough? A recent case helps to remind us that it is not as simple as this...