[goatherders]

At issue is he says that what he created is within the realm/market of his employer. That would be akin to an Intel engineer saying "I designed another microchip for computers but I promise I was doing this for me and not for Intel so its mine." You cant do some work on specific sector A for your employer and then do some other work in specific sector A on your own and now expect the employer to ask, justifiably, "who decided the dividing line here?"

[clucas]

My apologies, I was responding to the question about why a court would find an employment contract provision unenforceable - we don't know what the OP's employment contract states (or if he even has one), so I was treating this whole line of inquiry as separate from the OP's situation. Didn't mean to confuse the issues.