Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal

This Commentary highlights (for the first time in any legal journal on the subject of employment law), an emerging, improper use of noncompete agreements by certain employers against their competitors. The Commentary builds upon actual cases of the author, a practicing labor and employment attorney who represents employees and employers with noncompete agreements.

The Commentary describes how noncompete agreements have become an offensive "sword" by employers against other corporate employers, rather than being used by employers as defensive "shields" against separated employees. The greater danger to corporations may not be from separating employees, but from the previous employer of their new-hire employees. For those prior employers are trying to accomplish through litigation what they cannot accomplish through competition--namely, an unfair trade advantage in the market place by using the noncompete as the weapon against the new employer.

Finally, the author lays in this Commentary the groundwork for another writing he is finishing currently, which attempts to remedy this problem.