When a large corporation files suit against you, you're going to be bankrupted before much time passes. They do that to punish you if you've done something to make them angry. Whether you have signed a non-compete clause or not, they can claim you've swiped some of their trade secrets. You then have to defend. Lawyers charge between 4 and 10 times what an engineer is paid. In addition to that, judges are, in most cases, quite stupid in matters of technology.

I have never asked any of my associates to sign a non-compete clause, because the technology we produce is essentially obsolete once delivered, as is any technology. Once the package is delivered, we're all ready to move on, and not to copy. We already know how to do it better, rather than to replicate. We can leave that to the Asian copying industry. They're better at it than we are.

RE