[BillyOblivion]

It's not really predatory, or at least not in intent (you always have exceptions).

The basic rule of thumb when seeing stupid clauses like this is 'Someone did something shift, a lawsuit happened and the words "I didn't know I couldn't" came out of the defendant's mouth and that cost/almost cost the plaintiff the case. So now they make it overbroad so you can't claim you didn't know'.

There have been several cases over the years--one of which got several cow-orkers of mine fired--where the "side project" turned into a real company and it turned out to either be based on the companies source code, or created by looking at the companies source code (in one case a competing product, in another case a complementary product).

In some ways it's an "anti-predatory" clause.

I've mostly been subject to it at much larger companies and defense contractors.

It's also something that you can usually get a 'waiver' (or whatever your company calls it) for. Go to your boss, or whomever and get them to put in writing that "Yeah, we know about this, and it's ok with us".