Research On The Legal Application Of Non-compete Agreement

With the rapid development of the digital economy,enterprises are paying more and more attention to the protection of their trade secrets.In order to prevent the loss of trade secrets caused by the flow of employees,more and more enterprises have adopted the method of signing non-compete agreements with employees to protect their trade secrets.At present,there is a trend of non-compete agreements abuse,and the usage of non-compete agreements has spread from senior managers to basic employees,interns,retired employees,etc.The non-compete agreement is the result of a balance between the legal interests of the employer and the rights and interests of the employee,which protects the competitive advantage of the employer,but also restricts the basic right of the employee to choose jobs according to the Constitution.The first part elaborates on the brief introduction of the case of the "Non-Compete Dispute between Wang and WANDE Information Technology Co.Ltd.",and summarizes the two focus of dispute in the non-compete restriction on the definition of similar businesses and the determination of the validity of the non-compete agreement.The second part is a legal analysis of the non-compete system.Based on the legal analysis of the non-compete system,this paper clarifies the connotation of the non-compete restriction,explores the legal basis and value analysis behind the non-compete system,and lays a solid theoretical foundation for the analysis and research in the following article.The third part focuses on resolving the focus of dispute in the case: the definition of similar businesses in the non-compete restriction.Firstly,this paper discusses the scope of business license and actual business scope in practice,and only judges whether enterprises operate similar businesses based on the business matters registered in the business license in determining the scope of business license.In the determination of the actual business scope,it is mainly judged whether to operate similar businesses from the perspective of the actual business scope between enterprises.Secondly,this paper tends to support the judgment mode of actual business scope,and specifically puts forward judgment methods including the products or services actually provided by the enterprise,the publicity information of the enterprise,the customer base of the enterprise,the key restricted enterprises listed in the non-compete agreement and other methods.The fourth part focuses on the determination of the validity of the non-compete agreement.The article points out that the freedom of employment of workers is restricted by the non-compete agreement,and the court needs to carefully determine the validity of the agreement,and recommends that the court conduct a review of the validity of the agreement from the aspects of legality review and reasonableness review of the agreement.In terms of legality review,the court should focus on two aspects: the validity of standard clauses and the validity of agreements without non-compete compensation clauses;In terms of reasonableness review,the court should focus on three aspects: the voluntary signing of the contract,the eligibility of the employee’s status involving secrets,and the reasonableness of the geographical non-compete restriction.At the same time,when discussing the validity review of specific elements,the author focuses on the specific review content and the analysis of the validity of the agreement when the judgment threshold is crossed.