Purchasers of businesses and business assets often protect their investment by requiring the seller to sign a non-compete agreement. If the seller continued to engage in the same services, there would be little to no incentive for customers to buy from the Purchasers. The contract must specify the type of services that are prohibited by…
Continue reading ›Florida employers often require employees to sign non-solicitation agreements to protect their business from having its employees poached. Non-solicitation agreements often fail to define the term “solicit.” Solicitation is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019), as “[t]he act or an instance of requesting or seeking to obtain something; a request or petition.” Cases…
Continue reading ›Businesses submitting licensing applications with state or local government agencies are often required to file confidential documents and financial records. The State of Florida has a broad public records policy requiring that “all state, county, and municipal records…[shall be]…open for personal inspection and copying by any person.” Florida Statute § 119.01(1). Businesses are often confronted…
Continue reading ›A plaintiff alleging intentional discrimination must present sufficient facts to permit a jury to rule in his or her favor. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973) established a burden-shifting framework to test the sufficiency of the facts in plaintiff’s discrimination claim. Under McDonnell Douglas, the plaintiff bears the initial burden of establishing…
Continue reading ›The term ‘trade dress’ refers to the appearance of a product when that appearance is used to identify the creator of that product. Trade dress encompasses the total image of a product and may include features such as size, shape, color, texture, graphics, or particular sales techniques.” AmBrit, Inc. v. Kraft, Inc., 812 F.2d 1531…
Continue reading ›To protect their trade secrets and other valuable confidential information, former employers have sued former employees for breach of their non-compete agreements, along with additional causes of action. The factual basis for these additional causes of action and damages therefrom, are typically based on the same factual allegations that form the action for breach of…
Continue reading ›A party seeking a temporary injunction to enforce a non-compete agreement must establish four elements: (1) a likelihood of irreparable harm and the unavailability of an adequate remedy at law; (2) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits; (3) the threatened injury to the petitioner outweighs any possible harm to the respondent, and (4)…
Continue reading ›The Lanham Act does not contain a statute of limitations. When the filing of a trademark infringement lawsuit is delayed for years, the defendants may instead assert laches as an affirmative defense. Federal courts use the limitations period for analogous state law claims as a standard for the defense of laches. Peter Mavrick is a…
Continue reading ›Florida’s Non-Competition Covenant Statute, § 542.335, permits agreements that restrain competition so long as the agreement meets certain statutory requirements. One of the statutory requirements is that the party seeking to enforce the non-compete agreement must “plead and prove the existence of one or more legitimate business interests justifying the restrictive covenant.” § 542.335(1)(b), Florida…
Continue reading ›Many employers possess confidential information vital to generating profits. Employers routinely entrust employees with this information to facilitate business operations, but employees often leave their job after a few years to work for a competitor. When this happens, the employee takes the confidential information he or she learned to the next job. The employee might…
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