Erik W. Weibust, Member of the Firm in the Litigation & Business Disputes and Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practices, in the firm’s Boston office, was quoted in IAM Media, in “US FTC Votes Through Non-Compete Clause Ban Spelling Uncertainty for Trade Secret Strategy,” by Maia Biermann. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
The prohibition is facing legal challenges but businesses still need to review their restrictive covenants. …
In contrast, the agency expects that the ban will lead to an increase in employee earnings by an average of $400-488 billion over the next decade, or an average of $524 per worker per year. Moreover, it believes the overall economic impact will mean that more than 8,500 new businesses will be launched every year and average increase in the number of patents will equal to 17,000-29,000 patents over the next 10 years.
Among those not buying this attractive promise is Erik W. Weibust, a Boston-based partner at Epstein Becker & Green, where he focuses on trade secret and employee mobility litigation. Weibust believes that the rule is "arbitrary and capricious due the FTC's reliance on cherry-picked academic studies and surveys that are flawed in important ways and simply do not support a broad reaching ban of all non-competes nationwide, while ignoring other studies and surveys that undermine its position".
