On April 23, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or “the Agency”) voted 3-2 along partisan lines in a special public meeting to adopt the “Non-Compete Clause Rule” (the “Final Rule”), which will prohibit most employee non-competes with retroactive effect, except existing non-compete provisions of “senior executives.” The Final Rule will also
Non-Compete Agreements a Non-Starter? New Jersey Proposes Sweeping Non-Compete Legislation
New Jersey joins a growing list of states seeking to limit employers’ use of non-compete and non-solicitation agreements, adding to the patchwork of legislation in this area.
The New Jersey State Legislature proposed a bill on May 2, 2022 that would regulate and severely limit an employer’s use of non-compete agreements. Specifically, under A3715, all no-poach agreements would be void and non-compete agreements never enforceable against certain types of workers, including interns, apprentices, independent contractors, minors, low-wage employees, or employees who will be employed for less than one year. Outside of this population, restrictive covenants would only be enforced if the employer first discloses the terms of the agreement in writing 30 days before a prospective employee’s offer or, for current employees, 30 days before the agreement would be effective. Post-employment restrictions could only last for 12-months and employees must provide 10 days’ notice of their intent to enforce a post-employment agreement.Continue Reading Non-Compete Agreements a Non-Starter? New Jersey Proposes Sweeping Non-Compete Legislation
Co-Founders of Taiwanese Biotech Company Plead Guilty to Trade Secret Theft as U.S. Cracks Down on Corporate Espionage
On August 24, 2021, the Northern District of California accepted the guilty pleas of the two co-founders of the Taiwanese biopharmaceutical start-up, JHL Biotech (now known as Eden Biologiccs) for trade secret theft and wire fraud. Pending sentencing, both face steep criminal penalties and possible prison sentences.
Chief Executive Officer Racho Jordanov and Chief Operating Officer Rose Lin were indicted for engaging in a fraudulent scheme to steal confidential and proprietary materials from competitor Genetech for over a decade. With these materials, JHL Biotech boosted its own, business because it was able to “cut corners, reduce costs, solve problems, save time, and otherwise accelerate product development timelines, ” alleged the Department of Justice in their indictment earlier this summer. Acting United States Attorney Hinds called the company a “nearly $1 billion Taiwanese unicorn built on a foundation of lies.”
Continue Reading Co-Founders of Taiwanese Biotech Company Plead Guilty to Trade Secret Theft as U.S. Cracks Down on Corporate Espionage
New Jersey Appeals Court Rules that Defendant Can Review the Proprietary DNA Analysis Software That Linked Him to the Crime
Defendants may be entitled to review proprietary software code used in the prosecution’s expert probabilistic DNA analysis, according to a New Jersey appeals court in New Jersey v. Pickett.
In 2017, defendant Corey Pickett and an accomplice were arrested and charged with first degree murder after they allegedly fired weapons into a crowd, wounding one victim and killing another. In the course of the arrest, the police discovered a revolver and a ski mask. Finding the samples inappropriate for traditional DNA analysis, swabs from the revolver and ski mask were sent to Cybergenetics Corp.’s Laboratory to use its TrueAllele software to run probabilistic genotyping analysis on the samples. The TrueAllele software determined that Pickett was the source of the DNA on the revolver and ski mask.Continue Reading New Jersey Appeals Court Rules that Defendant Can Review the Proprietary DNA Analysis Software That Linked Him to the Crime