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I suspect that that would be unenforceable in the EU, UK, and Scandinavia. Is there a lawyer with experience in the field reading this?

eru 7y ago
Of course, they can still sue you for a long time.
shockkolate 7y ago
Of course it's enforceable. If you gain certain areas of knowledge working at a company where IP is restricted, then that restricted IP may be reflected in your personal code. This kind of practice is pretty common on a lesser scale, i.e. if you work on say a libc at work, then arguably you couldn't work on a libc or something very similar at home without risking a breach of IP. It just so happens that in Apple's case, they have fingers in such a large number of pies that it must take a great deal of work to verify that something /doesn't/ infringe on their IP.
lostmyoldone 7y ago
Not a lawyer, but I have previously contracted one to evaluate and discuss something closely related, which are the Swedish laws about non-compete clauses in employment or contractor contracts. In summary. They are allowed to some extent, but if a court would consider a non competition paragraph as being too broad, the paragraph becomes void in its entirety, as if it was never entered into the contract at all. For non management employees the exclusivity must be quite specific, and unless the law has changed recently without my knowledge, and entire industry, or a broadly specified skill would fail the test in any case I can think of. Applying the most basic levels of those principles, I would assume that attempting to limit a programmers ability to engage in programming in general would lead to nothing but a complete dismissal of any claims related to the non-compete clause if someone brought it to court. Effectively, if you try to prevent someone to apply their trades and/or talents to broadly, they could essentially moonlight for your worst competition without much of a risk as long as they don't convey what is clearly trade secrets as they are differently protected. Suffice to say that companies with decent legal departments tend to write specific non competition clauses especially outside of the realm of management positions, as they get no value at all from too broad non competition clauses.

eru 7y ago

Of course, they can still sue you for a long time.

shockkolate 7y ago

Of course it's enforceable. If you gain certain areas of knowledge working at a company where IP is restricted, then that restricted IP may be reflected in your personal code. This kind of practice is pretty common on a lesser scale, i.e. if you work on say a libc at work, then arguably you couldn't work on a libc or something very similar at home without risking a breach of IP. It just so happens that in Apple's case, they have fingers in such a large number of pies that it must take a great deal of work to verify that something /doesn't/ infringe on their IP.

lostmyoldone 7y ago

Not a lawyer, but I have previously contracted one to evaluate and discuss something closely related, which are the Swedish laws about non-compete clauses in employment or contractor contracts. In summary. They are allowed to some extent, but if a court would consider a non competition paragraph as being too broad, the paragraph becomes void in its entirety, as if it was never entered into the contract at all. For non management employees the exclusivity must be quite specific, and unless the law has changed recently without my knowledge, and entire industry, or a broadly specified skill would fail the test in any case I can think of. Applying the most basic levels of those principles, I would assume that attempting to limit a programmers ability to engage in programming in general would lead to nothing but a complete dismissal of any claims related to the non-compete clause if someone brought it to court. Effectively, if you try to prevent someone to apply their trades and/or talents to broadly, they could essentially moonlight for your worst competition without much of a risk as long as they don't convey what is clearly trade secrets as they are differently protected. Suffice to say that companies with decent legal departments tend to write specific non competition clauses especially outside of the realm of management positions, as they get no value at all from too broad non competition clauses.