This is the million dollar question. It depends on whether the restrictions only go so far as is necessary to protect the business’ proprietary interest. There are many arguments on both sides about protecting the business assets when staff leave and preventing solicitation and poaching when acting for the employer and being able to freely […]
Tag: restrictive covenants
Prosecution for stealing data
The Information Commissioner’s Office has prosecuted a former employee of a Company who transferred information about company clients to his personal email address before moving to a new job. The employee was working at a waste management company and he emailed himself details of over 950 clients. The information was commercially sensitive and included the […]
Introducing restrictions in contracts
It can be common for employers to seek to tighten up existing restrictions when issuing a new contract to ensure that the restrictions are still relevant for the individual and the business. Sometimes an employer will seek to introduce restrictions for the first time. A High Court case is a useful reminder that the employer […]
Restrictive covenants on appeal
You may recall my post some months ago about the widening of restrictive covenants by the Court. The court added words into the covenant to give it a commercially sensible result. If not here is a reminder: Restrictive Covenants Well the case has been overturned on appeal. The Court of Appeal has held in Prophet […]
Confidentiality in employment
In what appears to be one of the few times that a judge has felt justified in allowing the inspection and imaging of employees’ computers in the case of Warm Zones v Thurley and another, the High Court has ordered that an employer may instruct an independent computer expert to inspect and take images from […]
Restrictive Covenants
There is a familiar legal concept, which is that the Court can delete parts of a restriction to make it enforceable. The High Court has taken this a step further in the recent decision of Prophet Plc v Huggett [2014] where the Court read words into the restrictive covenant to produce a commercially sensible result. […]