The goal of non-competes?

There are several conversations going on pertaining to ‘non-competes’.  Bigan Sabet started the meme in a post titled, "Eliminate Non-Competes" and many others have commented including Fred Wilson in a post titled, "Thinking about Non-Competes".  The meme was started in context with a recent court ruling in California that took the bite out of most non-competes in the state.

We have beening using ‘non-competes’ for years and our primary goals are to a) to prevent a former employee from taking our customers with them to their new employer and b) to prevent a former employee from hiring or causing other’s to hire our employees.  In general we ask employees to agree not to work for a direct competitor for a period of 90 days following the termination of employement with our company.

In general, I am not opposed to Bigan’s suggestion that we should, ‘get rid of the non-compete clause’ in our agreements, but we must insist that employees agree not to solicit our employees or customers once they leave the company for a reasonable amount of time.  Additionally, we agree with Bigan when he suggests, "To be clear, I do firmly believe in maintaining strict non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality with regards to trade secrets and intellectual property. Those are essential and should considered completely differently from non-competes."

What are your thoughts?  What are you seeing in the Texas VC community? 

Frontpage photo credit:  fjny on flickr