A no-poach agreement is an agreement between employers not to
hire each other's employees. Such agreements have an obvious
negative impact on competition for labor and employees' ability
to find work, usually unlawful under antitrust laws. However, under
some circumstances, they can be permissible.
Some employers have argued that no-poach agreements have
legitimate business purposes which are not anti-competitive. For
example, when one business acquires a division of another business,
the acquiring business might legitimately ask the other to agree
not to solicit its employees to protect the assets it just
purchased.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have
taken the position that no-poach agreements are illegal.
See Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource
Professionals, ("Guidance"). The Guidance explains
that no-poach agreements are anti-competitive and violate civil and
criminal provisions of the antitrust laws. The Guidance cites
