> Non-compete clauses prevent you from competing and are largely unenforceable
Is this true? I'm not doubting, I'm just wondering why. I know a lot of people in the games industry who aren't allowed to work on mods for another company's game and are terrified to even do a little bit, so I always thought they were enforceable.
A lot of companies force you to sign an agreement that essentially hands over the rights to anything and everything you do while employed, even if you did it outside of work hours and on your own personal equipment. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know how enforceable this type of agreement is, but as far as I'm aware it has yet to be tested in court.
Your friends probably don't do games on the side because of such an agreement. I couldn't even imagine the issues that might arise from an employee working on mods for a competitor's game, especially since for some games modding isn't explicitly supported by the developer and modders are forced to break EULA's (by reverse engineering) in order to make the mods in the first place.
Notably, acquisition, which is what happened to VanderZanden is one of the few cases non-compete is enforceable, meaning they either didn't bother imposing a non-compete upon acquisition or it was only for 1 year and he ran out his term.
> I know a lot of people in the games industry who aren't allowed to work on mods for another company's game and are terrified to even do a little bit, so I always thought they were enforceable.
This wouldn't toggle a non-compete action. The primary company might come after you for beach of confidentiality or for conflict of interest, but not non-compete.
Non-competes in California have to be VERY constrained to be enforceable. Generally they are very time limited (12 months at the longest). The biggest arenas where they do get enforced is for people who are involved at strategic planning levels (like this CTO). The non-compete timeframe allows their knowledge to decay/stagnate/become less relevant/become less damaging.
This is one of the few times they would be enforcable though. They work when you can bring the client list or future of the company with you to your new job.
Yeah, it's one thing for Jimmy John's to protect their company from sandwich assemblers stealing sandwich secrets, its another for a corporate officer to move to their main direct competitor.
At least have the common decency to spend a period as a government industry regulator in between.
