A realistic view of non-disclosures & non-competes, from a translation professional
Last week I wrote a blog posting about intellectual property or, more like, asking the readers to define intellectual property for me. I received quite a bit of feedback, some of which made me think about another protocol of the translation industry, that of non-disclosures, non-competes, all of the various paperwork traded back and forth between agencies, translators, and various other players.
When I send a translator, linguist, consultant or a company a non-disclosure agreement, that agreement is only as good as my ability to litigate it. Even if it got to that point, it would be quite difficult to prove that my company had intellectual property that was stolen or misused, or that we had any trade secrets that had been shared outside the scope of our agreement. Unless I am willing to cause myself a lot of money and a lot of work, that non-disclosure agreement is a formality and generally quite useless.
The same occurs with non-competes. I had a situation myself some years back after I broke off from my first start-up. Even though I left the state for over a year to work, when I returned to Ohio and started working for a local translation company, the former owner, who took my leaving personally, went after me. Her non-compete claim was frivolous and didn’t hold up legally, but it did cost me close to 15k. If it costs me that much, it must have cost her probably 25k, and I am not sure what she got out of it. She did not win, she did not keep me from working, and she knew I had waited out my non-compete already. She may as well as burned the money in her backyard. In the end, she did me a favor because I had the opportunity to think hard about what I really wanted to do in the industry and, when faced with signing another non-compete for another translation firm, I could not stomach it.
However, now, with employees of my own, I find myself at a crossroads. My goal is to breed a sense of loyalty and of team, and to choose the right people from the get-go. As our team grow larger, and we too have our own non-competes, I find myself realizing that the likelihood of me enforcing one or chasing down a former employee is close to zero. I think the best way is to just stay innovative and keep growing, stay focused on the future. I see litigation as the adult way of throwing a fit when someone doesn’t do what you want them to do.
Back to non-disclosures, I think it is funny that we all think our information is so secret and so private. I’m not saying one should be careless; anyone who knows me knows that I am not a big talker about my core business, but let’s be realistic. I can scream, “You broke our agreement,” all day long but sometimes it is a simple matter of perspective. The other party, who you claim broke the contract, doesn’t view the situation or the information in the same way you do. Although there are some cruel malicious people out there, as soon as you get a hint of it, shut the door and move on. Quickly. Shut them out!
My major pet peeve is to hear a professional talking about someone else or another company and the words, “They stole MY idea,” or, “I did X,Y,Z for them and they fired me the next day.” I don’t listen too hard to those stories because the other side generally has a completely different view of the issue. If you listen carefully, there are people that are always being wronged and are always the victim. Stay away from those people. Nothing good can come from them.
All in all, I have no problem signing paperwork, although I will not sign another non-compete under any circumstances. However, I know that litigation or enforcing any kind of contract is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. If you haven’t been through it before, take my word for it. My non-compete issue dragged out for months and the only people that “won” were the lawyers.
In addition, enforcement is always retroactive. Once you hear your “trade secrets” have been told, they have already been told. Once a former employee is working for someone else, they likely have shared all they know. I took my own situation as a compliment. Another language services company in this city is so afraid of how hard I work and how good I am at my job, that they feel it necessary to sue me in order to stop me from working, a year and a half after the fact!
It’s tough out there. All I know is that no one company has an edge over any other. The only way to win in the translation industry or any industry is hard work, dedication, and customer service. All the paper and lawyers in the world can’t help your business if you don’t have those three qualities.
-GB
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Good post. I like your view on litigation and innovation!
Speaking of the two sides to every story, I remember an issue a client had… A terrible translator, basically. If you look on the ProZ forums you see him whining about the evils of agencies and clients that don’t pay, making out that he is a bad translator when he is not. As the proofreader assigned to his work, I can verify that in one instance at least, the client was in their right mind not to pay him, and for his disrespect of the client’s request, he would be best banned from ProZ… but I guess that only works one way.
The point of that example is that it is the same in any contract or agreement; people can and will always see things differently.
I think the main point of these non-disclosures is to avoid people approaching the end-clients directly… but realistically, you cannot always prevent that. Sometimes you do not know who the client is, sometimes you already have a relationship with the client, sometimes you will meet the client socially. A minefield.
[...] an insightful blog post about agreements in the translation industry, Grace Bosworth shares some personal experiences [...]