On The Reasonable Scope Of Contract Competition Restriction

As one of the very few systems that allow restriction of workers’ rights from the legal level,agreed non-competition has experienced the process of being generally denied at first to being accepted and adopted by the vast majority of countries and regions.At present,it has become a relatively common preventive means to protect the legitimate commercial interests of enterprises such as trade secrets.Among the components of the agreed competition,the most core is the object of the agreed competition,that is,the scope of the legitimate interests of the employer that the agreed competition system is worth protecting.The determination of the object scope guides the basic trend of the whole system and is the prerequisite for improving the agreed competition system.Therefore,when sorting out the shortcomings of the current agreed system of competition restriction,the first thing is to be clear about its legislative purpose,and then combine related theoretical development and judicial practice to improve.At the beginning of the birth of the non-competition system,its purpose is to maintain the competitive advantage of enterprises rather than the protection of trade secrets.The original intention of this legislation is also maintained until the extension of non-competition to the field of labor law,namely the establishment of the non-competition system.Article 23 of our current Labor Contract Law also stipulates that the object scope of protection of competition is not only trade secret,but also the secret matters related to intellectual property rights.Therefore,although the core protection interest of the agreed non-competition system is indeed a business secret,it is not the only interest to be protected.Whether its birth history or current legislation,it reserves space for other legitimate business interests of employers to enter the protection category of agreed non-competition.Although there is some difficulty in determining what other commercial interests need to be defended at the expense of the right of workers to freedom of choice,this does not justify ignoring the purpose of legislation.In order to correct the wrong tendency of giving priority to trade secrets and abusing agreed non-competition agreements in agreed non-competition disputes,this paper,on the basis of clarifying the legislative purpose of agreed non-competition,summarizes and determines various standards for the reasonable range of agreed non-competition,analyzes its advantages and disadvantages in detail,and finally puts forward the best standard for constructing the reasonable range of agreed non-competition in China.That is,the object of the agreed competition restriction is clearly the protectable interests of the employer,while the subject of the agreed competition restriction is limited to the scope of the laborer directly related to the protectable interests of the employer.The trade restrictions shall be more precise and limited to the actual business scope of the employing unit,and shall be identified in light of the businesses engaged in by the workers at their own positions.The geographical scope shall not be too broad,and shall be limited to the actual business area of the employing unit and the area that has an actual impact on the competitive interests;The time limit should consider various factors and be reasonably determined without exceeding the legal bottom line.In addition,due to the limited space of the law,many parts that cannot be elaborated in the legal provisions can be clarified through the formulation of relevant judicial interpretation and implementation rules,so as to ensure the implementation of the law.