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

Wisconsin is a reasonableness state with a remedy that punishes overreach.

Under Wisconsin Statutes § 103.465, an employee covenant is lawful only if its restrictions are reasonably necessary to protect the employer, and a covenant imposing an unreasonable restraint is void in its entirety — even as to any part that would have been reasonable.

Wisconsin does not blue-pencil.

Section 103.465 contains no dentist-specific rule, so the associate, the hygienist and the chairside assistant are all measured by the same five requirements.

What survives enforcement is narrowness: a short term, a territory your patients actually travel, and restrictions aimed at patient relationships and confidential information rather than at an ordinary departure.

How the rest of the country treats dental covenants is a different page's question: see our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

And if you are the associate holding the contract, that is the worker's side — see our guide to dentist non-compete agreements.

The rule that decides this in Wisconsin is a statute.

Wisconsin Statutes § 103.465 provides that any covenant covered by the section "imposing an unreasonable restraint is illegal, void and unenforceable even as to any part of the covenant or performance that would be a reasonable restraint."

That one sentence carries the consequence that shapes everything else: a Wisconsin judge will not trim your overreach and enforce the remainder.

The test courts apply comes from case law reading the statute.

In Chuck Wagon Catering (1979), a case recorded in the official annotation to § 103.465, the five requirements are that the covenant be necessary for the protection of the employer, provide a reasonable time period, cover a reasonable territory, not be unreasonable to the employee, and not be unreasonable to the general public.

One more case matters at signing.

Under the Runzheimer decision (2015 WI 45), an employer's forbearance from firing an at-will employee is lawful consideration for a restrictive covenant signed during employment — so you can put a covenant in front of a current hygienist or associate without inventing new money to trade for it.

The federal layer is quiet.

The FTC's 2024 non-compete rule was set aside in court and never took effect, and in a final rule published February 12, 2026 the FTC removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations — as of this writing, there is no federal rule banning employee non-competes, including for dental practices.

Wisconsin has none to draft around.

Section 103.465 has no health care- or dentist-specific rule, so the same reasonableness test governs an associate dentist, a hygienist and an assistant alike — and nothing in the five requirements turns on what the employee is paid: no earnings floor, no clinical carve-out in that test.

Two scope notes keep that statement honest.

First, it is a reading of § 103.465 and its official annotations; this page's research did not sweep every other Wisconsin chapter, so have counsel confirm nothing practice-specific applies to your facts.

Second, the research did not cover how Wisconsin courts have handled dental covenants in particular, so there is no published dental precedent list here to copy terms from.

The license at the center of an associate covenant is the credential covered in our guide to dentist licensure in Wisconsin.

The five requirements from Chuck Wagon Catering are the checklist a Wisconsin court works down, and the practical question for each:

• Necessary for the protection of the employer. Name the interest — patient relationships built at your expense, confidential pricing and production data, goodwill you paid for — rather than a generic wish to keep competitors away.
• A reasonable time period. The requirement sets a standard, not a number of months, so the defendable term is the shortest one that actually protects the interest you named.
• A reasonable territory. Draw it from where your patients actually come from, not from a radius that reaches people who have never sat in your chairs.
• Not unreasonable to the employee. This requirement runs in the employee's favor — another reason the term and territory must be genuinely narrow.
• Not unreasonable to the general public. This is a separate check from your own interest — have counsel test the covenant against it too.

The remedy is what makes Wisconsin unforgiving: because an unreasonable restraint voids the entire covenant, there is no prize for being almost right.

One partial offset is structural.

Wisconsin courts may enforce separate, independently readable covenants in one contract even when another is void, while provisions that are textually intertwined are indivisible (Star Direct, 2009 WI 76).

Whether a clause survives can turn on how you drafted it.

Non-solicits do not sit outside Wisconsin's regime.

Section 103.465 reaches employee non-solicitation clauses too: in the Manitowoc decision (2018 WI 6), it was applied to a provision barring a former employee from soliciting, inducing or encouraging coworkers to leave — so an employee non-solicit must clear the same five requirements as your non-compete.

How to build them: see our guide to patient and staff non-solicits.

The customer-contact clause Wisconsin has actually enforced comes from Star Direct (2009).

The clause barred a former employee from contacting past customers, defined as customers who had purchased from the employer within one year before termination, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court held it reasonable and enforceable.

Two features made it narrow: a defined lookback window, and a bar on contact rather than a ban on where the person could work.

For a practice, the customer analogue is your patient panel.

Confidentiality clauses belong in the same agreement but as their own section — Star Direct is also the divisibility case, and covenants that are separately and independently readable can survive even when another covenant in the contract is void.

Draft the non-compete, the patient non-solicit and the confidentiality clause so each stands alone.

Confidentiality also has a federal backstop with its own conditions.

The federal Defend Trade Secrets Act lets the owner of a misappropriated trade secret related to a product or service in interstate commerce sue in federal court, and business information — including compilations such as a patient list — is a trade secret only if you took reasonable measures to keep it secret and it has independent economic value from not being generally known.

The Act's injunction power has limits of its own: 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.

Wisconsin's regime rewards drafting discipline more than aggression.

The moves that hold up:

• Draft every covenant to survive on its own. Assume no judge will trim it: shortest defensible term, a territory your patients actually travel, and an interest you can name in one sentence.
• Separate the covenants. Non-compete, patient non-solicit and confidentiality as stand-alone, independently readable sections — so one clause's failure does not drag the others down.
• Model the patient non-solicit on the clause Wisconsin has enforced. A defined lookback window and a bar on contacting — the two features of the Star Direct clause the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld.
• Roll covenants into renewals without new consideration. Under Runzheimer, continued employment itself is lawful consideration for a covenant signed during employment in Wisconsin.
• Earn the confidentiality clause. Reasonable secrecy measures — locked-down records access, limited copies, signed agreements — are one of the two conditions that make patient and business information a trade secret; the information also has to have independent economic value from not being generally known.
• Where you fund a course or credential, use training repayment agreements instead — a different tool with its own rules.
• Have Wisconsin employment counsel review your templates — this page's research did not cover dental-covenant case law in Wisconsin courts, so counsel should test your final language before the next hire signs.