Research On China’s Agreed Non-competition Legal System

With the sustained and rapid development of China’s economy,trade secrets have become an important part of technological innovation of Chinese enterprises.In order to better protect business secrets,enterprises generally require employees to sign the agreed non-competition agreement.Nowadays,the compensation payment of non-competition agreement is extremely low,the restricted period is unnecessary long,the protected geographic location is wide,and the business scope of employment is broad,the signing of non-competition agreement not only restricts the freedom of employment of employees,but also affects the basic source of livelihood of employees.The failure of employees to fulfill the legal obligation of agreed non-competition agreement leads to frequent legal disputes in employment relations.Although competition restriction aims at protecting business secrets of enterprises,it also restricts employee’s employment freedom.How to balance the trade secrets of enterprises and the right of employees to choose jobs is the question should be discussed in this paper.This paper suggests that the agreed non-competition agreement should focus on the balance interest between employer and employee,and urgently appealing to legislators to consider restrictions on competition apply only for the enterprise’s "senior management" and "senior technicians",and further remove the "other persons with confidentiality obligations" clause from the Labor Contract Law.The protection of trade secrets can be further improved by using American’s "inevitable disclosure principle" as a reference for the applicable standard for the promulgation of temporary injunction and expanding punitive liability.The purpose of this study is to promote the progress of legal research on the protection of trade secrets in the field of employment relations.