
GA Court Decision Raises Questions about Restrictive Covenants - ivey
http://techdrawl.com/georgia-court-decision-raises-questions-about-restrictive-covenants-in-technology-agreements/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+techdrawl+%28TechDrawl%29
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mmastrac
The article explains what happened, but it doesn't explain why a non-complete
clause ended up in a software agreement.

The PDF of the decision is a little more informative. It seems like he wrote
software before being hired, worked on the software with the new company, then
left. Things got ugly after that:

<http://www.gasupreme.us/sc-op/pdf/s09a1485.pdf>

The record reveals that TREC is a medical practice specializing in retina
surgery. Coleman is a software engineer who was hired by TREC in 2000. Prior
to his employment by TREC, Coleman wrote and marketed a medical billing
program called Clinex. While employed by TREC, Coleman, with the assistance of
the doctors who worked for TREC, modified the Clinex program to suit TREC’s
specific business and developed an integrated retinal practice computer
application called Clinex-RE. Clinex-RE is a software program that integrated
electronic medical records and image storage with a billing software
component. Clinex and Clinex-RE are different programs, and Clinex-RE only
works in conjunction with Clinex. TREC contends that Coleman incorporated into
his Clinex program proprietary information and trade secrets of TREC in order
to develop Clinex-RE.

In 2003, Coleman and TREC entered into a Software Agreement that allocated the
rights to Clinex and Clinex-RE between TREC and Coleman. Although the Software
Agreement states that Coleman owns Clinex and that TREC only has a non-
exclusive license to use and sell Clinex, Paragraph 8 of the Agreement
provides that, “Coleman will not distribute, vend or license to any
ophthalmologist or optometrist the Clinex software or any computer application
competitive with the Clinex-RE software without the written consent of TREC.”

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gte910h
What exactly happened doesn't seem to matter as what precedent it sets though.

Sounds like they're putting forth a "duration or location" standard for non-
competes in GA. (As a Georgian, I'm ecstatic about that).

