A History of Thinking and Doing - the Regulation of Workers' Human Capital in the United States
Posted: 6 Dec 2004
Abstract
Today, the ownership of human capital has become a highly contested issue in employment law. Covenants not to compete are widely used in the American workplace and the source of an enormous volume of litigation. Trade secret disputes are also widespread. The issues raised by these cases are not new, but they are being posed in a new way. In the past, the regulation and ownership of human capital were matters of custom and institutional practice. There were disputes, but the disputes were fought in the marketplace either collectively, as industrial warfare, or individually, as part of the contention within the individual employment relationship. Today these disputes are fought in the courts. This paper presents a survey of the history of disputes about ownership of human capital in order to clarify what is new in today's disputes and to provide guidance about how courts should approach them.
Keywords: Employment law, ownership of human capital
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