Posts Tagged: confidentiality agreement
Mitigating ‘Justified Paranoia’ via Provisional Patent Applications
As mentioned in Part I of this series, many inventors will seek to obtain some kind of patent protection so they can stake claim to their invention. …
Justified Paranoia: Patenting and the Delicate Dance Between Confidentiality and Investment
Most inventors understand that a certain amount of paranoia goes a long way when dealing with an idea or invention. Ideas cannot be patented, but every invention …
What is a Confidentiality Agreement and Why are they So Important?
A Confidentiality Agreement, which is also known as non-disclosure agreement or simply as an NDA, is simply a contract between two or more parties where the subject …
Developing a Plan for Employee Departures in California
As discussed elsewhere in this Take 5, although California employers generally cannot restrict an employee’s ability to work elsewhere, California employers can protect their trade secrets and …
Invention to Patent 101 – Everything You Need to Know to Get Started
This page and website contain contain detailed information to help inventors on the road from invention to patent... Below are a sampling of inventor help links to …
Revisiting the Standard NDA After ZeniMax v. Oculus
ZeniMax offers useful insights for enterprises seeking to maximize the benefits of NDAs while minimizing the time and effort needed to negotiate them... Most technology enterprises are …
Protecting a Trade Secret: Taking Precautions to Preserve Secrecy
Trade secrets are easy to protect, at least in theory, because all the law requires is that the owner of the trade secret take reasonable precautions to …
What is a Trade Secret?
A trade secret is defined as any valuable business information that is not generally known and is subject to reasonable efforts to preserve confidentiality. Generally speaking, a …
A Provocative Idea That Turns Out to be Wrong
A very troublesome flaw in Talent Wants to be Free is that the author frequently conflates non-compete agreements with two other very common forms of employee restraints: …
Moving from Idea to Patent – When Do You Have an Invention?
In order to protect an idea it must mature into an invention first. This means that you need to be able to explain to others how to …
Protecting Ideas: Can Ideas Be Protected or Patented?
Unfortunately, despite what you may have heard from late night television, satellite radio commercials or snake oil salesmen, there is no effective way to protect an idea… …
12 Year-End Considerations for Non-Disclosure Agreements
As the year quickly comes to a close, I recently engaged in some file cleanup. During this cleanup, it struck me that the most common type of …
Justified Paranoia: Confidentiality Before and After Patent Filings
Just because getting a confidentiality agreement is difficult doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. There are those out there that are used to signing confidentiality agreements, such …
Moving Forward Responsibly with Your Invention Idea
Once you have done as much as you possibly can on your own you might want to consider hiring an engineering firm to provide additional information and …
Lessons: 5 Odd Things Inventors Tell Patent Attorneys
One of the problems created by true newbies, particularly those who have not done any reading or tried to at least bring themselves up to speed to …
