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Written by : Caridad Falci |
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welcome my name is Daniel Cohen I'm a registered patent attorney at Howard M Kohn and associates I would like to welcome you to another segment of our video blog series on protecting your intellectual property this video is entitled non-disclosure agreements clients frequently call wanting to know how they can disclose their invention to a prototype maker a manufacturer an investor or a potential buyer without them stealing their idea I usually suggest using a nondisclosure agreement often called an NDA to protect the confidentiality of theirs idea a non-disclosure agreement is actually a contract between one party such as the inventor who has the information and another party called the recipient that wants to receive the information the main purpose of the non-disclosure agreement is to ensure that the information remains secret and is not stolen often the receiving party which may be a company or an investor will provide a non-disclosure agreement for you to sign and you're wondering if you're properly protected in reviewing an NDA there are five important elements to consider the first is the definition of the confidential information ideally the NDA sets forth the scope of the information covered without actually disclosing the secrets the second element is identifying what information is not required to be protected and held confidential by the receiving party usually this is information that the recipient already knew or becomes publicly known or has independently developed the third element is the obligation for the receiving party to maintain the information in confidence and limit its use this might include who in the company has access to the information the fourth element is the period of time generally between one and five years that the recipient has to hold the information confidential finally the fifth element includes miscellaneous conditions generally found at the end of every NDA for example these could comprise which dates law will apply and the event the agreement is breached and a requirement that potential disputes be arbitrated as you can see a nondisclosure agreement can be quite complex and requires skill and experience in its preparation and negotiation the best advice is to have a patent attorney handle preparing and negotiating your NDA we have over 35 years of experience in crafting and negotiating the terms of NDA's if you have any specific questions or would like to schedule an initial free consultation please contact us by phone or through the employment box listed on this page thank you for listening it's been my pleasure to share valuable information with you today I look forward to speaking with you
Thanks for your comment Ferdinand Compston, have a nice day.
- Caridad Falci, Staff Member
I know you also mentioned intellectual property so so IP work is very interesting I think a lot of people who are in the technology field or who have tech businesses often think that the first thing you need to do when you want to start your business is to have an NDA to be able to talk to anybody about your product and I think that is a mistake be one because if you cannot talk about your product without revealing proprietary information then there's a problem right you should because you wouldn't be sharing that with your customers anyway right you would be sharing with them why they should be buying it why they should be engaging with you et cetera and it shouldn't have to include proprietary information to be able to give that to your client and then - I think MBAs are overused and under the value in what you think you're getting with an NDA it's not necessarily realized so non-disclosure agreements that's what NEPA stands for sorry I'm generally speak to you know that there's some information that you're exchanging with someone and you they are not allowed to speak on it unless you know if there are exemptions like if it's already out in the open etc but there should be some form of exchange of communication so you if your NDA is only so that you can tell someone about it then it doesn't really fully fully represent the relationship in that NDA and so to me it's kind of useless and just because you have an NDA doesn't mean that people won't talk about your business or won't tell people about it etc and in a way I don't think it's bad to have other people talking about your business and things like that and I don't think and I think India's make people feel as though they should be fearful about sharing their ideas and so they because it's like if you share it someone might steal it and take it and go do it and that's not necessary it happens I won't it doesn't happen but I don't think that's the foot pudding you should be on when you talk about your business it should be more about what problem you're solving what the solution is and how it could benefit your customers not all if I tell you about it you're gonna take it and then take the money technically you haven't even made any money yet right so you have to also think about that so is it really a business if you haven't actually earned any income and you're not out in the market etc not to say that you shouldn't have an NDA in place I'm just saying that to be when you think about putting it in the a in place think about all the things that come along with it and why you're doing it not because some incubator says that you should do it right you should do it because there is an exchange of information that you want to keep confidential and that person will likely be an investor maybe or that person will likely be a partner like there are certain people you would want to have an NDA with you wouldn't have that with your customer
Thanks PuszM your participation is very much appreciated
- Caridad Falci
About the author
I've studied african history at University of California, Riverside in Riverside and I am an expert in information theory. I usually feel blank. My previous job was fashion model I held this position for 16 years, I love talking about karting and painting. Huge fan of Doug Hutchison I practice canoe slalom and collect barbie dolls.
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