Although last year’s legislative efforts to ban—or limit further—non-competes in Massachusetts failed, proponents have vowed to revive the issue again in 2015-2016. Excluded from those proposed measures, however, has always been any restriction on employers’ use of customer non-solicitation clauses. Should the Legislature ever pass restrictions on non-competes, employers that have not already done so will flock in droves to the use of customer non-solicits, particularly with respect to sales-related employees. This makes the courts’ ongoing struggle to define customer “solicitation” in the digital age of paramount importance.
In the rapidly changing business world, protecting a company's human capital and proprietary information is critical to maintaining a competitive edge. On this blog, Nutter's experienced Business Litigation and Labor, Employment & Benefits attorneys offer news and insights on all aspects of restrictive covenants and trade secrets—from analyzing a rapidly evolving body of case law, to summarizing new legislation and legislative efforts, to providing other need-to-know updates and more.