Inching Closer to California: An Update on Massachusetts Non-Compete Legislation

As we have previously reported, in April of this year, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick introduced a sweeping economic growth bill (HB4045) that, if passed, would ban employee non-competes in the Commonwealth.  The bill has taken a somewhat convoluted path to date, and we wanted to update you on some notable twists and turns.

First, in mid-May, yet another bill (HB4082) was introduced that stripped those portions of Governor’s Patrick’s bill not dealing with trade secrets and non-competes (in other words, the vast majority of the 42-page bill), leaving only those sections that would adopt the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, repeal the current statutes regarding theft of trade secrets (Sections 42 and 42A of Chapter 93), and ban employee non-compete agreements.  This new bill is virtually identical to those provisions of Governor Patrick’s original bill (which, as of early this week, has now been stripped of the non-compete and Uniform Trade Secret Act provisions).  The introduction of HB4082 was likely due to concerns that Governor Patrick’s bill would not make swift enough progress, considering the wide scope of its other provisions that did not relate to employee non-compete agreements.  Earlier this week, this new bill was referred to the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies.

To read this blog post click here