Christopher Seaman

Christopher B. Seaman is the Robert E.R. Huntley Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. His research and teaching interests include intellectual property, property, and civil procedure, with a particular focus on intellectual property litigation and remedies for the violation of intellectual property rights. Seaman's intellectual property-related scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of leading law reviews and journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the Washington Law Review, the Wake Forest Law Review, the BYU Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, and the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Prior to his academic career, Seaman was a law clerk for the Honorable R. Barclay Surrick of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and practiced intellectual property law at Sidley Austin LLP.

Confidentiality Agreements Can Act Like Noncompetes

Noncompete agreements, which impose contractual limits on an employee’s ability to work after leaving a job, are regulated or banned in all states. But employers can potentially get around legal limitations on noncompetes by asking workers to sign confidentiality agreements that have similar functional effects. In a new article, Camilla A. Hrdy and Christopher B. Seaman provide empirical evidence that a significant number of employment agreements contain broad confidentiality provisions that place noncompete-like restrictions on workers.

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