GA Court Decision Raises Questions about Restrictive Covenants

The article explains what happened, but it doesn't explain why a non-complete clause ended up in a software agreement.

The PDF of the decision is a little more informative. It seems like he wrote software before being hired, worked on the software with the new company, then left. Things got ugly after that:

http://www.gasupreme.us/sc-op/pdf/s09a1485.pdf

The record reveals that TREC is a medical practice specializing in retina surgery. Coleman is a software engineer who was hired by TREC in 2000. Prior to his employment by TREC, Coleman wrote and marketed a medical billing program called Clinex. While employed by TREC, Coleman, with the assistance of the doctors who worked for TREC, modified the Clinex program to suit TREC’s specific business and developed an integrated retinal practice computer application called Clinex-RE. Clinex-RE is a software program that integrated electronic medical records and image storage with a billing software component. Clinex and Clinex-RE are different programs, and Clinex-RE only works in conjunction with Clinex. TREC contends that Coleman incorporated into his Clinex program proprietary information and trade secrets of TREC in order to develop Clinex-RE.

In 2003, Coleman and TREC entered into a Software Agreement that allocated the rights to Clinex and Clinex-RE between TREC and Coleman. Although the Software Agreement states that Coleman owns Clinex and that TREC only has a non-exclusive license to use and sell Clinex, Paragraph 8 of the Agreement provides that, “Coleman will not distribute, vend or license to any ophthalmologist or optometrist the Clinex software or any computer application competitive with the Clinex-RE software without the written consent of TREC.”

What exactly happened doesn't seem to matter as what precedent it sets though.

Sounds like they're putting forth a "duration or location" standard for non-competes in GA. (As a Georgian, I'm ecstatic about that).