Competition law is a subfield of other market and economic-focused legal fields that's focused on incentivizing

through various carrots and sticks and via the framework of how society and commerce function,

competition within commerce. The theory here is that more competition, both in the sense of more

competitors, and in the sense that competitors

can better challenge each other, leads to better products and services, cheaper prices,

and thus over time a superior marketplace for those selling goods and services and for consumers

on the other end of all those transactions.

This also, in theory, makes life better for the relevant government entities as a more flourishing economic situation and happier populace means less social unrest and more tax revenue flowing into government coffers. A win-win-win-win situation. One facet of the larger body of competition law is focused on what are called restraints of trade.

Basically, anything that limits or reduces competition, especially things that restrict the various involved party's ability to conduct business the best way they know how.

This aspect of this type of law coalesced several hundred years ago in Britain,

where concerns held by burgeoning manufacturing companies

led to the deployment of contracts that said, in essence,

if you come work for us, using our specialized textile machines, for instance, you can't then quit and

immediately start up your own textile business down the street using what you learned from us,

including our valuable trade secrets, to then make similar products and steal our customers

and generally threaten our business. These contracts were typically limited in geographic scope,

saying former employees could not start up a similar business within the same city or region,

and it often included a time period as well.

You can't start up a textile business in the Greater London area for the next three years, let's say.

This type of contract for a long time wasn't widely enforced,

even if businesses attempted to make it a real deal legal sort of thing.

Back in the day before labor was commodified by modern machinery

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