Sometimes, an employee will quit and start a business similar to yours, or move on to a rival business -- after learning how to succeed by working for you.

Have your employees sign this "Noncompete Agreement" to prevent them from creating, or working for, a competing business. This will protect your unique processes, client lists, secret recipes or techniques -- the things that give you a leg up over the competition because they're unique to your business.

Important to Know:

• California will not enforce a noncompete agreement against employees -- however, California employers can still use a "Confidentiality (Nondisclosure) Agreement" to protect vital information.
• Some states -- Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Texas -- have laws that limit the use of noncompete agreements. If your business is in one of these states, consult an employment law expert. However, employees in these states can still be asked to sign a "Confidentiality (Nondisclosure) Agreement" to protect vital information.

Operating system: Windows- and Macintosh-compatible. The computer you use to purchase an eForm must be the same computer you will download it to. (For example, don't purchase the eForm using your computer at work if you intend to download it later on to your home computer; instead, wait until you're on the computer you intend to download the eForm to and then make your purchase. After you've downloaded the file, you will be able to "transfer" it to another computer by copying it to external media or by email.) In addition, you will not be able to download this file if:

• cookies are disabled on your computer, or
• a firewall prevents you from downloading files from the Internet.

Software: Before you can use an eForm, additional software must be installed:
To expand the ZIP archive you download after making your purchase, you'll need:

• A decompression utility such as the following, both of which can be downloaded for free:

• 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org) (for Windows users).
• StuffIt Expander (http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/stuffit/expander.html) (for Macintosh). Please note: Many recently manufactured Macs have a native capability to decompress zip files. See your computer's user manual for verification of this and instructions for access.

To open, fill out and print an eForm, you need a word processor that "reads" RTF (rich text format) files:

• Windows XP & Vista both come with WordPad, an RTF-compatible word processor.
• Macintosh OS X comes with TextEdit, an RTF-compatible word processor; non-OS X users need Word 5.0 or greater, WordPerfect 2.1 or greater, or another RTF-compatible word processor.