Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters, and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing, and development.

Still, here at Miletti Law®, we feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy, & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seemed right to introduce one of the many upcoming series in which we introduce a variety of topics that looks to educate and deliver in a manner that only Miletti Law® can. To that end, this blog is Part XIII of our ongoing series on “Life Sciences Industry Guide for Labor and Employment,” in which we review the basics and issues of concern to employers engaged within the life sciences industry. In Part XII of the series and our blog titled “Protecting & Maintaining Secrecy of Trade Secrets; Best Practices,” we mentioned that employers are responsible for taking and making reasonable measures and efforts to protect their trade secrets and maintain the secret status of the same. We also added that, as one would expect, a trade secret becomes a lost asset once it is disclosed and/or used by someone who should not have. In this blog, we provide you with a few best practices and measures that employers may take in protecting their trade secrets and curbing any potential instance of misappropriation.

As a continuation of our discussion, this blog is titled “Understanding Restrictive Covenants in the Life Sciences Industry” and is an overview of issues related to restrictive covenants that employers within the life sciences industry should understand.

Understanding Restrictive Covenants in the Life Sciences Industry

In order to prohibit the use of proprietary information to the benefit of employees, employers often execute restrictive covenants and, consequently, protect their trade secrets. Through restrictive covenants, employees are prohibited and discouraged from engaging in activities that might harm former employers, such as competing against and/or stealing/soliciting clients.

Ideally, when it is deemed a “restraint on trade,” a restrictive covenant is considered to be invalid. For this reason, while they will at times attempt to strike some terms (the blue pencil rule) or even modify them (equitable information) as a way of limiting their scope, courts have shown reluctance in enforcing broad restrictive covenants.

Nonetheless, a court is likely to enforce a restrictive covenant if such a covenant is (1) not injurious to the public, (2) does not impose an undue hardship on the former employee, and (3) its terms are much less than is needed to protect the legitimate business interest of the employer.

One notable aspect is that restrictive covenants are essentially significant in this highly regulated industry when it concerns corporate transactions, acquisitions, and mergers. Usually, adjustments in the workforce usually move from side to side when larger conglomerates form mergers with, absorb, or purchase other companies within the industry. Employers within the life sciences must, therefore, understand that one thing that is paramount to the protection of assets is to make sure that restrictive covenants remain enforceable against any departing employees and contain the right language for the survival of internal corporate transactions.

In Part XIV of this series and our blog titled “Pre-employment Screening of Candidates in Life Sciences Industry,” we shall move the discussion forward by hammering on “pre-employment screening,” which is one of the things employers within the life sciences industry should consider during the screening and hiring of potential candidates.

In the meantime, stay tuned for more legal guidance, training, and education. In the interim, if there are any questions or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.