contract-law non-compete
Multiple Non-Compete agreements
<p>When I joined my current company, I signed a pretty standard non-compete, assignment-of-inventions type of agreement.</p>

<p>Now, some significant time later, a new round of investors/management is getting involved with the company, and their attorneys want staff to sign a new, slightly different agreement.  To my non-legal eyes, it looks like effectively similar boiler-plane. </p>

<p>As HR came around desk-to-desk to collect the new agreements, they also mentioned that a different investor and attorney wants yet another agreement!  And we should expect that one in a week or so.</p>

<p>While I do not have an issue with the general idea of a non-compete agreement, I'm concerned that three separate, multiple, overlapping agreements may, in total, have some conflicting or contradictory language with unknown or unintended consequences.</p>

<p>Can you explain the potential reasons for multiple agreements requested by multiple different attorneys?  How concerned should I be about this? Or is it just lawyers being nit-picky during their due-diligence during an investment?</p>

<p>Without seeing the actual text of the agreements there is no way to be sure how thy might differ, or conflict. I suspect that each investor wants the exact language that its lawyer has drafted. Significant conflicts seem unlikely, but are surely possible. </p>

<p>I would look at each agreement, and try to see if they appear to conflict, but I wouldn't worry overly. An employee probably will not be able to get any changes made anyway, so only if problems are serious enough to consider leaving the job is there any action to take.</p>
