IP responsibilities of ex-employee

An ex-employee wrote for advice on the question: I was planning to hire a couple of people from my old group. What should I do?

The answer from the columnist at the Arizona Republic:

In general, if an employee from your old group contacts you first, applies for a posted position or comes to you through a headhunter, you are free to hire him or her.

If you hire just one or two employees, especially from a large company, the company may only send you a letter like the one you got.

If you refrain from further hiring, you are not likely to hear from your ex-employer.

In real life, each case is different. It's difficult to establish whether one of your ex-colleagues contacted you or you called him. Hiring managers also tend to feed names to headhunters, and they then claim that the ex-colleagues came to them through the headhunter.

My real-life experience is that if your ex-colleagues are unhappy in their jobs with the ex-employer and you hire them, you usually get away with it.

see

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0921biz-asksteve0923-ON.html

see also


Trying to patent an older idea with a new employer?