An employer filed a claim against an employee to enforce a non-competition clause and a contractually agreed compensation.
The Court held that case law teaches that enforcement of a non-competition provision is designed to serve only legitimate interests of the employer, such as a trade secret, investing resources in special and expensive training of the employee, providing special consideration for the employee's agreement not to compete with the employer and compliance with the duty of trust between the parties.
In this case, the existence of a legitimate interest of the employer was not proven. In addition, however, the employee had contracted with a company that is a member of a group of companies of which one of them was represented by the employer. However, according to the agreement between the employer and the company it was forbidden to contact with another group company by the employer and thus that non-competition clause in the agreement between the employer and the employee and its interpretation was over broad. Therefore, the claim was rejected in its entirety.