A covenant by an assistant, servant or agent not to compete with his or her employer or principal during the term of the employment or agency, or after the termination of that employment or agency, within a specified territory and during a specified time is lawful and enforceable only if the restrictions imposed are reasonably necessary for the protection of the employer or principal. Any covenant, described in this section, imposing an unreasonable restraint is illegal, void and unenforceable even as to any part of the covenant or performance that would be a reasonable restraint.
Wis. Stat. § 103.465
Restrictive covenants in employment contracts
Applied in 57 court decisions — leading case Strozinsky v. School District of Brown Deer (2000)
Most recently applied in Lawson v. Spirit Aerosystems (April 2025)
1995 a. 225; 1997 a. 253; 2015 a. 197 s. 51
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Wisconsin State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Wisconsin statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.