Employment contract, how strong? conflict of intrest?
Employment contract, how strong? conflict of intrest.?
i am currently working for a photographic company in the uk, i plan on leaving there photography studio to set up my own studio. having read the contract of employment it states the following
“you shall not, for a period of 6 months after the termination of your employment, either on your own behalf or with, through, for or intrested in any business which competes with the which you carried out on behalf of the company at any time during the 12 months prior to the termination of your employment within the company region or area to which you were alocated at the date of termination of your employment, without prior written agreement from us”
what should i do? what happends if i do open a photographic studio? what loop holes are there? any? can they fine me? if so how much? what are my rights?
consider photography is my trade.
This is a section from which I posted an answer to this same question earlier:
In the U.K., non-competition agreements are commonly included in the employment contracts of senior employees. If an employer wishes to enforce such an agreement post-termination, it should ensure that it terminates the employee’s employment in accordance with the employment contract. If the employer breaches the contract, for example by not giving the employee the contractually-required notice of termination, the non-competition agreement will not be enforceable.
Non-competition agreements are prima facie against public policy and therefore unenforceable unless found to be reasonable in the interests of the contracting parties and of the public. There are two stages in assessing reasonableness. Firstly, the agreement must be drafted to protect only the legitimate proprietary interests of the ex-employer.[12] Legitimate interests include customer/client/supplier connections, trade secrets (or other information of a confidential nature), and the stability of the workforce. Secondly, the scope of the restraint must go no further than is necessary to give adequate protection to the ex-employer’s legitimate interests.[13] Scope refers to geographical area, activities/subject-matter and duration.
Of all the post-termination restraints placed on ex-employees, non-competition agreements are assumed to be the most onerous and are therefore scrutinized most carefully by the courts. Accordingly, they have generally been harder to enforce than other post-termination restrictions, although the courts have up-held non-competes on the basis that a restriction on solicitation would be difficult to police and therefore might not effectively protect the employer’s business interests.[14]
So, the way it seems is that your employer can attempt to hold you to the contract but in the UK, these types of contracts, called non competes, are very difficult to enforce and are not often upheld by the courts. These contracts are usually used for upper management personel who would have inside knowledge on an employers ‘trade secrets”. The contract would be considered even less enforcable if you opened your studio NOWHERE near your employers, thus his possible defense of you effecting his profits by setting up shop in his geographical area would not hold up.
So you can take the chance and very likely get away with it. The process is that he would have to take you to court and prove the validity of the contract which as stated above, more than likely would not be upheld.
The Cloister Hotel Sea Island Georgia
