Non-Compete in consultancy and switching to freelance work
<p>I'm currently working as a cloud engineer in a cloud consultancy company and when I joined the company as part of my contract there was a non-compete clause forbidding me to carry on a business or work for a business identical or similar to the business of the company within European Union. My company in a nutshell does cloud infrastructure and software development projects(short and long term) for other companies and also provides managed services for their infrastructure.</p>
<p>Here's the non-compete clause:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Within a period of one year after termination of the employment the Employee may not in the European Union, in any way, directly or indirectly, carry on a business, work for a business or be involved in a business, in the broadest sense of the word, which is identical to or similar to the business of &quot;company name&quot;, nor may the Employee have such business conducted or have a financial or other interest in such business.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I would like to start freelancing working as a cloud engineer for companies who are not competitors and I'm wondering if I would be in breach of my contract if I work with businesses who do not offer the above services and are not competing with my current company.</p>
<p>One could say by doing freelance work as a cloud engineer, I would be running a business that provides cloud infrastructure services similar to my company.</p>
<p>By doing freelance work with non competing companies, would I be in breach my contract? Would that include companies outside of European Union with my business registered in Netherlands?</p>

<p>After talking to a lawyer I have found that if a non-compete can prevent one completely to use their skills freelance or not, it would be too broad and unreasonable.</p>
<p>My lawyer's opinion would be, in the case that I wouldn't be working with competitors or using company secrets to gain advantage this broad clause would be difficult to enforce and risky to take to court.</p>
<p>Of course his suggestion was to talk to employer which their corporate lawyer would suggest waiving the non-compete partially, but if the employer is not cooperative, going to court to ask a judge to reduce the scope of it is a possibility.</p>

non-compete netherlands freelance