Hello DP, I am about to hire some content writers, linkbuilders and so on. With the content writers i dont see much of a problem, but the linkbuilder guys could easily take any good ideas and outrank me for it on their own, especially since they are a team. Is there any legal way to prevent this? I am in Europe, i live in Spain, Sweden or Poland depending on time of the year and the linkbuilders are in the Philippines. I am a private person, not a company, and i dont really have the resources to hire a lawyer. If anyone could point me in the right direction of what i could do and how such a contract might look like I would be very grateful. cheers
From a practical standpoint, there is absolutely nothing you can do. You are dealing with multiple countries, each with different laws. Even if you hired an attorney to draft something up, you would need the money to enforce it and you could be talking about tens of thousands in legal fees (or more) to go to court. It's just not worth it.
Follow their reputation would be a good idea. Professional reputation is the thing they care very much.
The other thing would be that since you aren't actually employing them but simply purchasing their services, I doubt any of them would be willing to sign a non-compete clause simply because you would then be restricting their ability to continue to be free-lancers/companies in their own right.
While I agree with mjewel that there is little or nothing that you can do from a practical standpoint to enforce an agreement, I think it is important to put your intent into a written agreement. First of all, there are people in the world who honor their agreements out of principle. Setting forth your expectations in writing will clear up any misconceptions or misunderstanding about what those expectations are. You may think that the link builders should not work for a competitor and they may see that as a natural extension of what they do for a living. Second, there are people who will do the right thing out of concern that hordes of lawyers will swoop down on them. While that is not practical in most situations, having an agreement will deter people from doing something that they would do in the absence of an agreement. RonBrown is also probably right that most link builders would not agree to a non-compete clause (or would sign it with no intention to honor it). However, if it is drafted narrowly enough, they may be willing to do so. I represent a number of consultancy firms and software developers. Although they cannot sign agreements with non-compete clauses that would block them from a significant portion of the market, they are often willing to accept tightly worded clauses that would keep them from providing similar services to a direct competitor of their client. In link building, I think it would be reasonable, for example, if you were an estate planning attorney in Portland, Oregon, that you would not want the person to take on another client that was competing for the exact same keywords. But that should not keep the link builder from representing a personal injury attorney in Portland or an estate planning attorney in San Francisco or Seattle. If the link builder was not willing to commit to that limitation up front, I would probably look for another service provider.
I've been doing this for a couple of years now, and in my experience there really too much of a need for a non-compete if you are outsourcing work to a different country. Worst case scenario some guy from India calls up your client and says he can give you a better price? The average customer is not going to want to do business with a foreigner. (No offense to India, just used it as an example). That being said, it doesn't hurt to get a little something in writing, even if it isn't legally binding. At least then you can claim originality, and use it against their image if they are competing with you.
I agree with most of what is written below, but I too think the most important factor is doing your own research into the person and their reputation before you work with them. Spend a little time up front to avoid problems later.
Legally you could try to set something up, but in all honesty there's no way you could enforce it. They're far away and no one's going to help.
Hmm.. You don't have the funds to hire a lawyer to draft a contract, how do you expect to enforce it? As most others have stated, write up a basic agreement and hope they honor it. Otherwise contact a competent lawyer who is skilled in the laws of the country your looking to outsource work to and go from there.