Allison Bowers to Speak at the University of Texas 29th Annual Technology Law Conference
Allison Bowers will present “The Case of the Moonlighting Employee” with Brenna Nava of Rackspace. The presentation is part of the Technology Law Conference organized by the Continuing Legal Education Program of the University of Texas School of Law. The conference will take place on May 26 and 27 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin.
Although the word moonlighting has been used for nearly 60 years to describe an employee working a second job during their off hours, the ramifications of these secondary employment situations have grown exponentially over the decades. Today, in the fast-paced, high-tech industry, a company’s employees often take on consulting projects for other companies, work on their own passion projects and startup ideas both during and after their primary work hours, and even develop applications and programs for their employer’s platform for which the employer allows the employee to retain the resulting intellectual property and much of the ensuing revenue, all with the employer’s blessing.
Unfortunately for employers, not all employees undertake side work with the best of intentions. The past two decades have been fraught with litigation in the high tech world resulting from employees who unfairly compete with their prior employer, who breach their fiduciary duties, who disclose, consciously or unconsciously, protected proprietary and confidential information and who unlawfully claim that inventions and intellectual property developed by them actually belongs to them and not their employer despite the fact that they had contractually agreed otherwise.
Allison and Brenna will present dilemmas taken from the ever-shifting landscape of supplemental employment in the technology field and how those situations implicate state and federal contractual and common law obligations for both employers and their moonlighting employees. Allison and Brenna also provides up-to-date model agreement language designed for technology employers so that they can best protect their business should an employee (or employees) act in a manner that unfair competes with or unlawfully damages a company or diverts away corporate opportunities for that employee’s benefit.
A copy of Allison’s and Brenna’s paper can be found at this link Moonlighting Employee.
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