In Mass, the courts have a history of enforcing these agreements, however recent trends do favor you,also as in JANUARY a bill was proposed to deny all non compete agreements. I do not think your specific position is unique to your company and any trade secrets or intellectual property would be lost, therefore I think it would be unenforceable.

In Mass, the agreements must pass muster with the courts, in three specific ways.

First, the agreement must protect a legitimate business interest and not “ordinary” competition.

In other words, should a sheet metal supplier enter into a non-competition agreement with its sales manager, it will not be enforced if the sales manager is prohibited from selling ceramic tile, for instance.

Next, the agreement must be reasonable in terms of geographic territory.
What is reasonable depends largely on the specific circumstances. The Massachusetts courts have upheld worldwide restrictions, where the business was both unique and sold to limited number of customers in an international marketplace.

On the other hand, two mile restrictions may be held to be unreasonable for a pizza shop, where there may be six or seven other shops within the two mile radius.

Finally, the courts will look to the duration of the agreement. As a general principle, the shorter the duration the more likely it will be found to be reasonable.

Typically, assuming all of the other criteria are met, an agreement of one or two years will ordinarily be found to be reasonable.

Non-compete agreements may be signed at the initiation of employment, or during employment.

Until recently, the Massachusetts courts have uniformly held that if a non-compete agreement is signed once employment is commenced, there must be some new consideration, such as a bonus. In my reading of current case law in MASS, when the employer hires you if the job position is different a new non compete must be made or if a new comnpany is joined they should have offered a bonus at the time of signing.

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CONTACT THE LOCAL BAR ASSOCIATION THEIR ARE MANY SMALL FIRM ATTORNEYS WHO CAN DO THIS