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Miscelánea

No. 23 (2019)

The protection of businesses through non-competition agreements in labor law

  • Pablo René Carrasco Torrontegui
  • Patricio Pozo Veintimilla
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18272/iu.v23i23.1430
Submitted
May 15, 2019
Published
2019-06-25

Abstract

Entrepreneurs have the commercial interest to protect their business and prevent their former employees from engaging in economic activities that compete directly, or through third parties, with their business after the termination of the employment relationship. One of the most common protection mechanisms is non-competition agreements, which establish the limitation of the former employee being able to compete in the market where their former employer operates. Given that these agreements contain a limitation to the exercise of labor and economic rights guaranteed in the Constitution of the Republic, and in the absence of a regulation that precisely regulates these agreements in the Ecuadorian legal system, international doctrine and jurisprudence have developed the requirements that should be included for the validity of the agreement, such as: the existence of a legitimate commercial interest of the former employer, adequate economic compensation to the former employee, temporal delimitation, written agreement; and, limitation of the relevant market only in the segment or activities in competition.

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