Beyond Trade Secrecy: Confidentiality Agreements that Act Like Noncompetes

There is a substantial literature on noncompete agreements and their adverse impact on employee mobility and innovation. But a far more common restraint in employment contracts has been underexplored: confidentiality agreements, sometimes called nondisclosure agreements (NDAs). A confidentiality agreement is not a blanket prohibition on competition. Rather, it is simply a promise not to use or disclose specific information. Confidentiality agreements encompass trade secrets, as defined by state and federal laws, but confidentiality agreements almost always go beyond trade secrecy, encompassing any information the employer imparted to the employee in confidence. Despite widespread use, confidentiality agreements have received little attention. Many commentators view them as innocuous compared to noncompetes. However, confidentiality agreements that go beyond trade secrecy are not harmless. Leveraging an original dataset of confidentiality agreements in employment relationships disclosed in federal trade secret litigation, this Article argues that many of these agreements have the effect of noncompetes. They protect far more information than trade secret law does—including publicly available or generally known information, and information that trade secret law would classify as unprotectable “general knowledge, skill, and experience.” They prohibit use as well as disclosure of the covered information. Most provide for injunctions in the event of breach, and nearly half provide for payment of attorney’s fees and costs. And unlike most noncompetes, they almost never have geographic or temporal limitations. The phenomenon of confidentiality agreements that “act like noncompetes” has not gone unnoticed. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently issued an unprecedented Notice of Proposed Rulemaking announcing its intention to effectively ban workplace noncompetes nationwide. The FTC also condemned what it calls “de facto non-compete clauses,” including overly broad confidentiality agreements. The FTC’s rulemaking has yet to move forward and is likely to be mired in legal challenges. Fortunately, this Article reveals that courts across the nation have already begun to invalidate confidentiality agreements that operate as de facto noncompetes. Regardless of whether the FTC ultimately succeeds in regulating these agreements, courts have the power and precedent to do so on their own. Drawing on case law and prior proposals, this Article gives guidance going forward. It does not advocate for a blanket ban on confidentiality agreements. Rather, it contends that courts and other decision makers should treat confidentiality agreements that go beyond trade secrecy under a default rule of unenforceability, similar to how most jurisdictions treat noncompetes. The burden should be on the employer to prove that such agreements are reasonably related to protecting legitimately secret information and that they do not function like noncompetes

Nonlinear Band Structure in Bose Einstein Condensates: The Nonlinear Schr\"odinger Equation with a Kronig-Penney Potential

All Bloch states of the mean field of a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a one dimensional lattice of impurities are presented in closed analytic form. The band structure is investigated by analyzing the stationary states of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger, or Gross-Pitaevskii, equation for both repulsive and attractive condensates. The appearance of swallowtails in the bands is examined and interpreted in terms of the condensates superfluid properties. The nonlinear stability properties of the Bloch states are described and the stable regions of the bands and swallowtails are mapped out. We find that the Kronig-Penney potential has the same properties as a sinusoidal potential; Bose-Einstein condensates are trapped in sinusoidal optical lattices. The Kronig-Penney potential has the advantage of being analytically tractable, unlike the sinusoidal potential, and, therefore, serves as a good model for experimental phenomena.Comment: Version 2. Fixed typos, added referenc

Training telescope operators and support astronomers at Paranal

The operations model of the Paranal Observatory relies on the work of efficient staff to carry out all the daytime and nighttime tasks. This is highly dependent on adequate training. The Paranal Science Operations department (PSO) has a training group that devises a well-defined and continuously evolving training plan for new staff, in addition to broadening and reinforcing courses for the whole department. This paper presents the training activities for and by PSO, including recent astronomical and quality control training for operators, as well as adaptive optics and interferometry training of all staff. We also present some future plans.Comment: Paper 9910-123 presented at SPIE 201

A mechanism for the non-Fermi-liquid behavior in CeCu_{6-x}Au_x

We propose an explanation for the recently observed non-Fermi-liquid behavior of metallic alloys CeCu_{6-x}Au_x: near x=0.1, the specific heat c is proportional to T \ln (T_0/T) and the resistivity increases linearly with temperature T over a wide range of T. These features follow from a model in which three-dimensional conduction electrons are coupled to two-dimensional critical ferromagnetic fluctuations near the quantum critical point, x_{c}=0.1. This picture is motivated by the neutron scattering data in the ordered phase (x=0.2) and is consistent with the observed phase diagram.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, 3 figure

Non-Fermi Liquid Behavior In Quantum Critical Systems

The problem of an electron gas interacting via exchanging transverse gauge bosons is studied using the renormalization group method. The long wavelength behavior of the gauge field is shown to be in the Gaussian universality class with a dynamical exponent $z=3$ in dimensions $D \geq 2$. This implies that the gauge coupling constant is exactly marginal. Scattering of the electrons by the gauge mode leads to non-Fermi liquid behavior in $D \leq 3$. The asymptotic electron and gauge Green's functions, interaction vertex, specific heat and resistivity are presented.Comment: 9 pages in REVTEX 2.0. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. 3 figures in postscript files can be obtained at [email protected]. The filename is gan.figures.tar.z and it's compressed. You can uncompress it by using commands: "uncompress gan.figures.tar.z" and "tar xvf gan.figures.tar

Non-Fermi Liquid Behavior in Dilute Quadrupolar System Prx_{x}La1−x_{1-x}Pb3_3 with xx≤\le0.05

We have studied the low-temperature properties of Pr$_{x}$La$_{1-x}$Pb$_{3}$ with non-Kramers $\Gamma_{3}$ quadrupolar moments of the crystal-electric-field ground state, for a wide concentration range of Pr ions. For $x$$\le$0.05, the specific heat $C/T$ increases monotonically below $T$=1.5 K, which can be scaled with a characteristic temperature $T^{*}$ defined at each concentration $x$. The electrical resistivity $\rho$$(T)$ in the corresponding temperature region shows a marked decrease deviating from a Fermi-liquid behavior $\rho$$(T)$$\propto$$T^{2}$. The Kondo effect arising from the correlation between the dilute $\Gamma_{3}$ moments and the conduction electrons may give rise to such anomalous behavior

Order and nFl Behavior in UCu4Pd

We have studied the role of disorder in the non-Fermi liquid system UCu4Pd using annealing as a control parameter. Measurement of the lattice parameter indicates that this procedure increases the crystallographic order by rearranging the Pd atoms from the 16e to the 4c sites. We find that the low temperature properties depend strongly on annealing. Whereas the non-Fermi liquid behavior in the specific heat can be observed over a larger temperature range after annealing, the clear non-Fermi liquid behavior of the resistivity of the unannealed sample below 10 K disappears. We come to the conclusion that this argues against the Kondo disorder model as an explanation for the non-Fermi liquid properties of both as-prepared and annealed UCu4Pd

Empirical Investigation on Agile Methods Usage: Issues Identified from Early Adopters in Malaysia

Agile Methods are a set of software practices that can help to produce products faster and at the same time deliver what customers want. Despite the benefits that Agile methods can deliver, however, we found few studies from the Southeast Asia region, particularly Malaysia. As a result, less empirical evidence can be obtained in the country making its implementation harder. To use a new method, experience from other practitioners is critical, which describes what is important, what is possible and what is not possible concerning Agile. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the issues faced by early adopters in Malaysia where Agile methods are still relatively new. The initial study involves 13 participants including project managers, CEOs, founders and software developers from seven organisations. Our study has shown that social and human aspects are important when using Agile methods. While technical aspects have always been considered to exist in software development, we found these factors to be less important when using Agile methods. The results obtained can serve as guidelines to practitioners in the country and the neighbouring regions

Spinless Two-Band Model in Infinite Dimensions

A spinless two-band model is studied in infinite dimension limit. Starting from the atomic limit, the formal exact solution of the model is obtained by means a perturbative treatment of the hopping and hybridisation terms. The model is solved in closed form in high dimensions assuming no local spin fluctuations. The non-Fermi liquid properties appearing in the metallic phase are analysed through the behaviour of the density of states and the self-energy near the Fermi level.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in PRB-Breif Repor