Robert Milligan and James McNairy Published in Bloomberg Law Reports - Intellectual Property and Labor & Employment

"California Supreme Court Rejects the Ninth Circuit's Narrow Restraint Exception to California's Prohibition on Employee Noncompetiton Agreements"

Robert Milligan and James McNairy’s feature article, "California Supreme Court Rejects the Ninth Circuit's Narrow Restraint Exception to California's Prohibition on Employee Noncompetiton Agreements," was published in the August 25, 2008 issue of Bloomberg Law Reports - Intellectual Property and August 18 in the publication's Labor & Employment law report. In their article, Robert and James discuss the California Supreme Court's recent decision, Edwards v. Arthur Andersen LLP, which held that employee noncompetition agreements are invalid under California law, even if narrowly drawn, unless the agreement falls within narrow statutory exceptions.

The authors also outline the potential impact for California employers, such as the protection of trade secrets: "Edwards places an increased focus on trade secrets and organizations should take care to ensure that they have adequately identified, described, and crafted agreements that are designed to protect their trade secrets… Auditing your organization's trade secrets protections is a valuable first step toward protecting against this risk and ensuring that your organization's trade secrets are adequately protected."