Municipality Playing Hardball with Nursery School Teachers

Recently, a friend of mine asked me about a 3-year non-compete clause his nursery teacher wife was asked by the city of Jerusalem to sign.

Last year, the Knesset passed a new law providing for free nursery school education for 3 and 4 year olds (see article here.)  In order to immediately implement this law, the city asked local nursery teachers who already had private classes in their apartments if they wanted to fill the positions available for the city nurseries. Many of these women already had established reputations in their neighborhoods. Now, they could go to work for the city and bring their clientele with them.

My friend's wife had been running her own nursery program for a few years and applied for a position and was accepted. She recruited children for the class but had not yet signed a contract with the city. When she received the contract, she was surprised to see that it had a 3-year non-compete clause that looked something like this:

All Your Work is Belong to Us (for Compensation?)

An article in Haaretz today reports on a recent Supreme Court decision suggesting that the inventor listed on a patent application may be entitled to compensation for a service invention even where he signed an agreement assigning the invention to his employer and waiving his rights to compensation. A service invention, described in Section 132 of the Patent Law, is an invention created during the employees' term of service for the employer and as part of his work which, unless agreed otherwise, belongs to the employer. It is similar to a work for hire in the US copyright context.

I think the article makes two errors (but correct me if I'm wrong).