One of the more challenging aspects of practicing intellectual property (IP) law is helping businesses develop strategies to protect the IP they create, and the competitive advantage that can be gained by preventing certain IP from falling into competitor’s hands. Armed with various laws and contractual restrictions, practitioners devise strategies that attempt to balance the reality that employees may leave a company while also ensuring that the company’s IP does not walk out the door with them.

A noncompetition agreement, or noncompete for short, is a type of post-employment restrictive covenant and one of the devices used to help protect a company’s IP, specifically trade secrets. However, the use of noncompetes is not without its challenges. Some states, like California, have long banned the use and enforcement of noncompetes, while other states have imposed various requirements that must be satisfied for a noncompete to be legal and enforceable. A constantly changing legal landscape—Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota radically changed their laws in the last few years—adds to the challenge of using noncompetes. Despite these challenges, noncompetes remain a valuable tool for protecting trade secrets.