Non Compete Agreements

In Trust Me, I wrote about the friend of a friend who wanted me to participate/invest in his new Internet venture, mostly the technical end. The first thing he did, was to ask me to sign a non-compete agreement. I agreed and signed, no question asked. I did read the non-compete agreement before signing, and still I didn't ask any question about it. Why?

This non-compete agreement was worthless and not worth the attorney fees he paid. I'm supposed not to compete with his idea for a full year. The problem is that you can't patent or copyright ideas. You can only patent processes, and copyright finished goods, such as photos, writings. I could implement their idea for 0, yes zero, dollar with open-source software.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has been sued, unsuccessfully, by classmates because they first had the idea of Facebook while at Harvard University.