How long is &quot;5 years or such other period as permitted by law&quot;? I have to sign an NDA with a non-disparagement clause, which is defined to last for a period of five years or for such other period as permitted by law. I've tried to find any laws limiting how long an NDA can last, and I couldn't find any limit. Does this mean that this NDA is in effect indefinitely? If yes, why would the NDA mention the five years at all? The company is based in California, the court they name in the contract is in California. I'm in EU.
The alternative is that in some jurisdiction, an NDA cannot last as long as 5 years, it might be only allowed to last 3 years (this page has some of the state restrictions. In that jurisdiction, the NDA is therefore good for 3 years. It's not practical for an employer to know all of the possible legal conditions on duration of an NDA, so the option &quot;for such other period as permitted by law&quot; allows the contract to recognize local time limits, which are exceptions to the general 5 year duration as stated in the contract. The duration could in principle be indefinite, but the wording in this case says &quot;5 years&quot;.
Can landlord backbill 4.5 years worth of utilities that were never billed to us bimonthly as directed in the lease? Yes, since the bimonthly billing issue appears to be within the LA statute of limitations for claims of breach of contract: 10 years (see here). But you might want to check the actual legislative language of the statute referred therein and the prior or consecutive ones --all pertaining to statutes of limitations-- so as to ascertain the accuracy of information in the first link (navigating through the bunch of LA two- or three-line statutes for this and that gets annoying). They are desperate to get me to move out since it is a rent-controlled unit and I feel like they have done this to cause issues and force me to default on rent. Is this a legal practice? I am not knowledgeable of state legislation particular to rent-controlled units, but I highly doubt it is lawful for them to proceed that way. Other details you describe reflect that the company has been --or is being-- malicious or grossly negligent. If so, strictly speaking, the company's conduct (1) ought to weaken its position or merits in trying to force you out, and (2) tends to contravene the contract law covenant of good faith and fair dealing (see below). If your lease mentions any statutes regarding rent-controlled units, you may want to search for case law at leagle.com to see how the statutes are applied. Without knowing the terms of your lease, I think your priority should at all times be the rent itself so as to avoid eviction. Does the "billing every two months" in the lease have any hold on this issue if they breached their own lease? Maybe not. The repeated, yet sole, failure to send you the bimonthly billings falls short of landlord's breach of contract. For your argument on breach of contract to prevail, you would have to prove that the landlord knowingly/deliberately let the water bills pile up prior to demanding you to pay everything at once. That would prove that the landlord is not meeting the covenant of good faith and fair dealing that is prerequisite in contract law.
Note that the answer to most of your questions has nothing to do with the GDPR specifically, but has to do with the legal force that an EU Regulation has. Here's a related answer on EU Regulations vs. Directives. That said, here are my answers to your specific questions: So member states can define a different age, even though the GDPR says that it should be 16. But is this an exception? Yes. Are there any other exceptions? Yes. Scanning the Regulation for instances of "Member State" is a good way to find them. In my opinion, the biggest area of the GDPR where Member States have influence is Article 6, "Lawfulness of Processing". In some circumstances, it allows Member States to specify what could be considered a lawful basis for processing. Must these exceptions be explicitly stated in the GDPR? Yes. As a Regulation, exceptions must be explicitly stated in order to be permissible because Member States have no authority to overrule EU law*. I'd like to understand to what extent the GDPR must be followed by member states, and to what extent it could be amended in national laws. "Amended" is a fuzzy term. It can mean adding, changing, or removing from the law. Unless otherwise specified, Member States could not change or remove provisions, but there could very well be additions consistent with the GDPR. *Some Member States dispute this statement when it comes to constitutional issues.
The validity of the NDA is not an easy question, but a related one is more clear. A lawyer in the U.S. in most states is not permitted to threaten criminal or administrative action (e.g. reporting someone to immigration or tax officials), to gain advantage in a civil case. You can unilaterally bring criminal charges or take administrative action, but it is deemed to be unethical and against public policy to refrain from bringing criminal charges or taking administration action to gain civil advantages. An NDA of the type described arguably violated the same public policy and might be invalidated as a result. Put another way, there is a privilege to make certain reports to public officials without legal consequences and such an NDA might violate that privilege. Some of these privileges found in what are called "whistle blower" statutes specifically prohibit this kind of agreement as to some specific kinds of illegal conduct, but not others. There isn't a general rule. This said, it is not black and white. For example, a private NDA can't prevent someone from testifying under subpoena, but can prevent someone from voluntarily testifying in the absence of a legal compulsion to do so such as a subpoena. Suppose a woman is sexually assaulted at work, and is given an NDA to sign. Can the company legally require her not to disclose the conduct of an illegal activity? I can imagine this example coming out different ways in different jurisdictions. For example, some states have a legal duty (rarely enforced) that requires people to report felonies, and an NDA in this case would contradict that affirmative legal duty, while others do not. Another source of gray in the analysis is that there is a difference between not reporting a sexual assault that actually happened, and, as part of a larger settlement, executing an affidavit stating under penalty of perjury and under oath that a sexual assault didn't happen. The first is potentially an NDA that is void as a matter of public policy. The other, in principle, is a settlement that the person signing the affidavit can only enter into if it is true. There is nothing, in general, wrong, about requiring someone to confirm that certain representations are true as part of a business transaction or contract and allowing the contract to go forwards only if certain facts are true. The gray gets deeper, because whether a sexual assault happened or not is not always a subjectively black and white clear issue of pure fact. (It is subjective because an affidavit or affirmation is made to the best of the declarant or affiants' knowledge and belief, not as a matter of objective fact.) For example, someone may not have perfect memory of what happened, or there could be doubt over the question of whether the perpetrators acted recklessly (the Model Penal Code intent requirement for sexual assault) or merely with criminal negligence (which would not be sexual assault under the Model Penal Code). A statement made under oath about whether a sexual assault happened to the best of your knowledge, thus, might be a mixture of factual issues (A penetrated B at a certain date and time) and legal or not perfectly factually known ones (A acted with X intent regarding consent during that act). So, in a case where there was some room to argue either way about how to characterize what happened and about what actually did happen, there might be some room for a settling party to make a non-perjured statement consistent with the settlement and then to agree not to a true NDA, but instead to not make statements which, if the affidavit is true, would be false. In a plea bargain in a criminal case, one can plead "no contest" without agreeing that the crime factually happened, but that isn't really possibly in the context of an affidavit about what really happened, with an NDA limited to not disclosing the incident since it was already agreed as a matter of sworn fact that there is nothing to disclose that rises the level of a crime.
There are three answers here. First, as is common on this site, you are using the term, "legal" and "illegal." Those are not legally meaningfully terms. A good lawyer won't use those terms to mean allowed or disallowed. We talk in terms of potential civil or criminal liability, or other sanctions and consequences. To say that something is "legal" does not communicate much. Second, all contracts are governed by a duty of good faith. That means that you cannot try to "trick" someone with the terms of the contract and expect to enforce that contract against them and you cannot try to skirt your obligations by finding a tricky form of compliance not within the mutual understanding of the agreement. As with all things, defining good faith is not easy, and depends on the specific context of a situation. It is worth distinguishing between the duty of good faith, and the duties one owes to a fiduciary; good faith is surely far less, but nevertheless still meaningful. Third, a defense to non-performance of a contract is that the agreement as written is unconscionable. A contract that is a grossly unfair deal where the contract was not actively negotiated (i.e. Blindly signing a bad form contract), may fall under this category. Note: I am not your lawyer; this is not legal advice; contact a licensed attorney in your area; do not rely on my statements; I merely am providing a general answer that is academic in nature.
The customer will own exactly what is stated in the contract. As the contractor, who wants to be able to reuse code (which is in everybody’s best interest) you want to keep the copyright, with the client having the license to use the code any way they want. If the customer wants the copyright with the contractor losing all rights, that will be in the contract, and it will cost. If the contractor produced an application that use lots of domain knowledge supplied by the client, that will often not give the client copyright, if the contractor is the one producing the actual expression of that knowledge by translating knowledge into code. If the client provides knowledge that is actually a trade secret, then an NDA should be signed. And again, it’s contracts. The client can put into the contract that their domain knowledge must not be reused. That is quite reasonable. The client might add to the contract that the contractor will not write software for any competitor. That is legal if it is in the contract, but it will cost.
Such a clause must be presented before or at the same time the offer is made. The (somewhat new) law NH RSA 275:70 says Any employer who requires an employee who has not previously been employed by the employer to execute a noncompete agreement as a condition of employment shall provide a copy of such agreement to the potential employee prior to the employee's acceptance of an offer of employment. A noncompete agreement that has not been disclosed to an employee as required by this section shall not be enforceable against the employee, but all other provisions of any employment, confidentiality, nondisclosure, trade secret, intellectual property assignment, or any other type of employment agreement or provision shall remain in full force and effect The question is whether such an agreement would mean you can't set up shop on your own and take a bunch of customers with you (it seems that such clauses are enforceable), or does it mean you can't work in that trade (competing for new customers, or as an employee of a competitor) – such an interpretation would not be enforced, in the analysis of this article. The clause must be "drafted narrowly to protect only a company's legitimate business interests, like customer goodwill and confidential information". A specific case of this interpretation is Merrimack Valley Wood Products v. Near, 152 N.H. 192, which finds that the law does not look with favor upon contracts in restraint of trade or competition...Such contracts are to be narrowly construed. Nonetheless, restrictive covenants are valid and enforceable if the restraint is reasonable, given the particular circumstances of the case In assessing reasonableness, three tests must be passed (must be answered "no"): first, whether the restriction is greater than necessary to protect the legitimate interests of the employer; second, whether the restriction imposes an undue hardship upon the employee; and third, whether the restriction is injurious to the public interest. As an example of a reasonable restriction: When an employee is put in a position involving client contact, it is natural that some of the goodwill emanating from the client is directed to the employee rather than to the employer. The employer has a legitimate interest in preventing its employees from appropriating this goodwill to its detriment. But restricting a person from working with any customers of the company (not just the employees work-related contacts) is unenforceable, because the company had no legitimate interest in protecting its entire client base from its former employee, because he had no advantage over any other complete stranger, possessing no special hold on the goodwill of the majority of Technical Aid's customers. See also Brian's Fitness v. Woodward for reaffirmation ("valid only to the extent that it prevents an employee from appropriating assets that legitimately belong to the employer"), and additional citations. The question arises whether there is a distinction between the former employee approaching former customers, versus those same customers approaching the former employee. I have not located any case that directly addresses that, but Technical Aid v. Allen, 134 N.H. 1 says A restrictive covenant must unreasonably limit the public's right to choose before it will be found to be injurious to the public interest. I think it is likely that the courts would find it to be an unreasonable limit on the public's right to choose, if a customer were prevented from choosing a different company to provide the desired service simply because the customer happened to have previously had a business relationship with the former employee. This "right to choose" is asymmetrical – the public has a right to choose any service provider, an employee does not have an equivalent right to pursue (seek out, woo) a customer, in light of a restrictiveness covenant.
Yes, patents expire. The term is generally 20 years, but a patent can expire earlier if the owner fails to pay the scheduled maintenance fees. 35 U.S.C. § 154, 35 U.S.C. § 41 The patent owner could grant you permission to make, use, or sell the invention. This isn't the same as getting permission to call it your own, and it is completely separate from copyright.