Ex-Employee’s Knowledge of Method that Former Employer Used in Calculating Bulk Product Quotes Leads Illinois Appellate Court to Enforce 24-Month Non-Competition and Non-Solicitation Agreements

An Illinois Appellate Court recently affirmed a preliminary injunction granted to a medical products manufacturer against its former employee, enforcing 24-months’ non-competition and non-solicitation agreements. The non-competition agreement barred the defendant-employee from competing with the plaintiff with respect to all products and territory assigned to the defendant during his final 18 months of employment. The non-solicitation agreement prohibited the defendant from soliciting or assisting in the solicitation of sales or leases of such products competitive with the plaintiff’s products in that same territory.

The court concluded that the defendant possessed confidential information concerning his ex-employer’s method of calculating so-called “open quotes,” offers to sell products in bulk to specific customers, even though the open quotes themselves were not confidential and they resulted in orders less than 50% of the time. Moreover, the competitor for whom the defendant went to work already was selling similar products to the same customers before the defendant changed employers. Furthermore, many of the plaintiff manufacturer’s employees did not have confidentiality agreements, and the defendant was not charged with taking any information with him when he left the plaintiff’s employ, other than what he had in his head. Lifetec, Inc. v. Edwards, No. 4-07-0300 (Ill.App., 4th Dist., Nov. 6, 2007).

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