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My name is Scott warmuth kunzler IP law and today I'll be discussing employee non-compete agreements under Utah law the courts have held that employee non-compete agreements are enforceable if supported by consideration negotiated in good faith if they're necessary to protect the goodwill of the business and if they're limited in time and geographic area this generally means that the employee non-compete agreements are only enforced if they are conditioned for being hired or if they are a condition for a significant promotion such agreements are almost never enforced if they are signed shortly before the employees terminated the key thing to show to a court if you're to enforce an employee non-compete agreement is that the agreement was necessary to protect protect goodwill or legitimate business interest and that means to protect important trade secrets to protect a special investment in employee training to protect an exclusive sales territory something something where you can show that the employee has access to something very critical to the business and if they were able to go and start competing against the business it would significantly harm the business it's important to note that this is not include what the court calls common callings in other words if for example a technician was servicing a client or if one of several salesmen were calling on a client these are generally not considered to be legitimate business interests it's also very important that the terms of the employee non-compete agreement limit the time and the geographic extent in Utah that generally means no more than two years although there was a case many years ago where five years was helped to be acceptable with a very narrow two-mile radius geographic limit if you decide to pursue a strategy of employee non-compete agreements here are some strategies to keep in mind first use non-compete agreements with only a very few key employees if you make everyone in a business sign a non-compete agreement the chances that those agreements will be enforced is diminished second for those non key employees use solicitation agreements these are also effective but because they're narrower in scope the courts are much more likely to enforce them and finally turn tailor the terms of the agreements to the business interests so for example for a junior employee may use a non-solicitation agreement with a very short term while using a longer term with a more senior employee