USD School of Law Professors Orly Lobel and Ted Sichelman Featured in Wall Street Journal Debate

Professors Orly Lobel and Ted Sichelman Featured in Wall Street Journal Debate

SAN DIEGO (October 13, 2021) – USD School of Law Warren Distinguished Professor of Law Orly Lobel and USD School of Law Director, Center for Intellectual Property Law & Markets, Professor of Law Ted Sichelman, recently engaged in a debate over noncompete clauses for executives in The Wall Street Journal.

Lobel and Sichelman debated whether noncompete clauses for executives should be legal. The Wall Street Journal published two short essays, one written by Lobel and the other written by Sichelman, defending their positions on the subject.

Lobel argues that noncompetes for executives should not be legal because they reduce wages and job mobility. She also argues that noncompetes harm entrepreneurship and innovation. Overall, Lobel contends that the extensive benefits of a competitive labor market far outweigh the risks of losing intellectual property. She points to California, and specifically Silicon Valley, to show that in places where noncompetes are banned, industry and innovation flourish.

Sichelman argues that noncompetes for executives should be legal because they protect a company’s trade secrets. He writes that, “Noncompetes significantly reduce the risk that trade secrets, other intellectual property and customer relationships will be expropriated by departing employees.” Further, Sichelman argues that noncompetes incentivize companies to invest in educating and training their executives knowing that competitors won’t be able to free-ride off that specialized knowledge. In response to Lobel’s Silicon Valley example, Sichelman contends that several other factors aside from the ban on noncompetes played a part in the area’s flourishing.

You can read the full Wall Street Journal article here.

About Warren Distinguished Professor of Law Orly Lobel

Warren Distinguished Professor of Law Orly Lobel’s areas of expertise include Intellectual Property, Employment and Labor Law, Government Agencies, Employment Discrimination, and Regulation. She has received numerous awards in recent years, including the Thorsnes Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship and the Irving Oberman Memorial Award. Her two latest books have won several prestigious awards.

About Professor of Law Ted Sichelman

Professor of Law and Director of Center for Intellectual Property Law & Markets Ted Sichelman’s areas of expertise include Law and Technology, Intellectual Property, Patent Law, Artificial Intelligence and Law, Business and Corporate Law. He is the director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law & Markets, the founder and director of the Center for Computation, Mathematics, and the Law, as well as the founder and director of the Technology Entrepreneurship and Intellectual Property Clinic. Sichelman was recently awarded the Thorsnes Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship.

About the University of San Diego School of Law

Each year, USD educates approximately 800 Juris Doctor and graduate law students from throughout the United States and around the world.  The law school is best known for its offerings in the areas of business and corporate law, constitutional law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, public interest law and taxation.

USD School of Law is one of the 84 law schools elected to the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates.  The law school’s faculty is a strong group of outstanding scholars and teachers with national and international reputations and currently ranks 30th nationally among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 31st nationally in past-year faculty downloads on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1954, the law school is part of the University of San Diego, a private, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.