Non-Disclosure Agreement Attorney West Plains MO

The best way to protect your idea or intellectual property is not to disclose it at all. However, that’s just not practical if your intention is to profit from your great idea. So at some point, you will be faced with that most frightening moment: actually disclosing your idea to one or many parties, each who represent a threat to tell the idea to others, or worse yet, to copy your idea and profit from it themselves. Using Confidentiality Agreements or Non-Disclosure Agreements (a.k.a. “NDA”s) are a step you can take to provide some level of protection and comfort for your intellectual property. But frankly, NDAs are hard to enforce. Litigation is expensive and there are so many grey areas involved in making a case. The best approach to disclosing an idea is to get a signed NDA from the party in combination with the following measures:

1. Disclose intellectual property to reputable third parties. Do your homework on the person or company to whom you’ll be disclosing before actually disclosing any information.
2. Disclose intellectual property in levels of detail. Start with a general disclosure first. If the party is interested at the completion of each level of disclosure, continue with the next level of detail, and so on. In the first most general disclosure, do not disclose the essence, the “secret sauce”. Rather, first provide information about what the invention or idea is, who the market is, and how big the opportunity might be.

Author: The Sloan Brothers

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