Are Non-Competes Enforceable for Dentists and Dental Staff in Oregon?

Yes — for an associate dentist whose agreement clears every condition Oregon's non-compete statute sets.

ORS 653.295 turns enforceability into a compliance checklist rather than an argument with a judge: written offer at least two weeks before day one, salaried exempt status, pay above an inflation-adjusted threshold, a protectable interest and a signed copy delivered after termination, with the term capped at 12 months.

Oregon BOLI says covenants signed on or after January 1, 2022 that miss the criteria are simply void — the employee does not have to take any step to invalidate one.

For hourly hygienists and assistants, the salaried-exempt condition is the wall.

Oregon will enforce a covenant against a non-exempt or below-threshold employee only where the employer agrees in writing to pay them for the time they are restricted — a real cost you should weigh against a non-solicit, which needs none of the statutory conditions.

This page is the employer's Oregon view; if you are the associate handed a covenant to sign, see our guide to dentist non-compete agreements for the worker's side.

Start with what does not govern.

The FTC's 2024 non-compete rule was set aside in court and never took effect: as Oregon BOLI recounts the history, a federal judge blocked it nationwide on August 20, 2024 and the FTC voted on September 5, 2025 to dismiss its pending appeals; in a final rule published February 12, 2026 the FTC then removed the rule from the Code of Federal Regulations.

There is no federal rule banning employee non-competes at a dental practice.

The FTC says it can still challenge individual non-competes case by case when they are unjustified, overbroad or anticompetitive.

How other states treat dental covenants: see our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

In Oregon the governing law is a statute, ORS 653.295, and it works as a set of bright-line conditions.

An employee non-compete is enforceable only if all of the following are true:

• Advance written notice. The employer informed the employee in a written employment offer received at least two weeks before the first day of work that a non-compete is required as a condition of employment — or the agreement is signed on a later bona fide advancement.
• Salaried exempt status. The employee is a salaried exempt employee under ORS 653.020(3).
• A protectable interest. The employer has one — the statute's examples are trade secrets and competitively sensitive confidential information.
• Pay above the threshold. The employee's annual gross salary and commissions at termination exceed an inflation-adjusted figure Oregon BOLI publishes each year:

• A copy in the employee's hands. Within 30 days after termination, the employer provides a signed, written copy of the agreement's terms.
• A 12-month ceiling. The term may not exceed 12 months from the date of termination.

Miss the notice, status, protectable-interest, pay or signed-copy condition and the consequence is not a courtroom fight over reasonableness: for agreements signed on or after January 1, 2022, BOLI says covenants that miss the statutory criteria are simply void.

Oregon enacted a 2025 healthcare non-compete ban — and dentists are not on its list.

Under ORS 653.297 (SB 951, 2025), a non-compete that restricts the practice of medicine or nursing is void and unenforceable between a “medical licensee” and any person, management services organization or hospital, subject to narrow exceptions.

The ban reaches agreements with medical licensees entered into before, on or after its June 9, 2025 effective date, so it applies to covenants already on file.

“Medical licensee” is a closed four-item list: individuals licensed to practice medicine, as nurse practitioners, as physician associates, or to practice naturopathic medicine.

Dentists and dental hygienists are not on it, so their non-competes stay under the general ORS 653.295 conditions — and this guide's research found no Oregon statute giving dentists their own ban or buyout formula to draft around.

The ban does bite if your organization employs medical licensees alongside dental staff: a physician's or NP's covenant in that operation is void subject to the statute's narrow exceptions, however well drafted it is.

Because Oregon loads the reasonableness questions into the statute, your drafting questions are concrete:

• Time. Twelve months from termination is the statutory ceiling — draft the term to it, never past it.
• Legitimate business interest. Oregon's statutory version is the protectable-interest requirement, and the statute's examples are trade secrets and competitively sensitive confidential information. Name the interest yours protects, and remember that the confidentiality measures later in this page are part of the same case.
• Area. The statutory conditions this guide verified set no mileage figure, and Oregon dental covenant case law was not researched for this guide — treat geography as a question for your Oregon employment counsel rather than a number from this page.
• Who can be bound at all. A salaried exempt employee above the threshold clears the status and pay conditions. A non-exempt or below-threshold employee — think hourly hygienist or assistant — can be held for up to 12 months only if the employer agrees in writing to pay, for the restricted period, the greater of 50% of the employee's annual gross base salary and commissions or 50% of the inflation-adjusted threshold.

The termination-date measurement matters in both directions: the threshold applies to salary and commissions at termination, so an associate whose compensation has slipped below the line between signing and leaving does not clear the condition they signed under.

ORS 653.295's conditions do not apply to covenants not to solicit employees, or not to solicit or transact business with the employer's customers (ORS 653.295(5)(b)).

For a dental practice, the customer covenant is the patient non-solicit, and the employee covenant protects your hygienists, assistants and front office from being poached.

One drafting caution: Oregon appellate case law is reported to read “customers of the employer” as current customers — a reading this guide's research took from statute annotations and could not verify against the case itself — so have counsel settle how far your patient clause reaches before you rely on it.

See patient and staff non-solicits for how these clauses are structured.

Confidentiality is the other protection outside the statute, and it matters twice: it guards the patient list, and it is what makes the protectable interest real.

Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, business information — including a compilation such as a patient list — is a trade secret only if the owner took reasonable measures to keep it secret and it derives independent economic value from not being generally known.

The DTSA lets the owner of a misappropriated trade secret related to a product or service in interstate commerce sue in federal court, but an injunction under it may not prevent a person from entering into an employment relationship, and conditions on new employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on what the person knows.

Oregon rewards the practice whose paperwork is boring and on time:

• Fix the offer, not the exit. The two-week written-offer notice cannot be added after someone has started — the statute's only alternative is signing on a later bona fide advancement.
• Check the threshold at termination. $119,541 for 2026 terminations, and BOLI reprices it every year — put the check in your offboarding checklist, not just your offer checklist.
• Deliver the signed copy within 30 days of termination. Calendar it; the condition is easy to meet and the covenant is void without it.
• Price garden leave before you promise it. Paying half of an employee's annual gross base salary and commissions — or half the threshold, whichever is greater — for up to 12 months is a real cost; weigh it against whether a patient and staff non-solicit plus confidentiality terms reach the conduct you actually fear.
• Protect the patient list itself. A patient list is a trade secret under federal law only if the owner takes “reasonable measures” to keep it secret — access controls and signed confidentiality terms are part of showing that.
• Price training separately. If the real worry is recovering a hiring or training cost, that is a different tool with its own limits — see our guide to training repayment agreements.
• Start with licensed people. A covenant only matters if the person can practice — our guide to dentist licensure in Oregon covers what the state requires.
• Have Oregon employment counsel review the template before it goes into an offer packet — the threshold reprices every year.