manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis) (03/06/87)
In article <226@fornax.uucp> chapman@fornax.uucp (John Chapman) writes: >... There have been contracts in the US where >the employee agrees not to work in field X for a certain time period >after leaving the company. Not just "you can't use proprietary info" >but you can't work in that area at all. I can remember reading of a >couple of cases of this in the trade papers a few years ago. This doesn't have much to do with Canadian politics, but I believe that these contracts aren't enforceable. The only time they are is in some very esoteric areas (including much of computer science and engineering), where anything you might do in a field after working somewhere would make use of proprietary information you acquired there. For example, if you were at a place like Myrias (which I pull out of the air at random, having no direct knowledge of the firm), and left to work somewhere else on hypercube architectures for UNIX systems, you might have real difficulty forgetting what you learned at your former employer's. When I worked at a US research firm, I was required to sign an agreement regarding proprietary information. I also was required to sign away rights to anything I did *while employed there*; however, the agreement allowed me to list areas of expertise which were not to be covered (and hence in which I would not be assigned to work while there). I listed every area I could possibly think of. To get back to Canadian politics: Q. Why does the government need a relational data base? A. To keep track of appointments and contracts. ----- Vincent Manis {seismo,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis Dept. of Computer Science manis@cs.ubc.cdn Univ. of British Columbia manis%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5 manis@ubc.csnet (604) 228-6770 or 228-3061 "BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of 'Scientific Creationism'."