NDA's

What is an NDA? An NDA is a Non-Disclosure Agreement. This basically says that if you are the inventor and if you would like to show off your invention to a prospective manufacturer, bidder, distributor, store, etc. that you reserve your rights in the Intellectual Property. In theory, an NDA will prevent the other guy from taking your idea and running off with it.

For most inventors, they are surprised to learn that when they want to show off their invention to any other corporation, the other corporation will refuse to sign any NDA that is not already prepared by THEIR attorneys. And you can rest assured that then NDA that is prepared by THEIR attorneys, will not be very helpful to you. However, you should know that any NDA will not permit the other guy from running off with your invention insofar as you already have a patent application pending with the USPTO.

So what should you do if a corporation does not want to sign your NDA? Well, this is a business decision, but chances are if you already have your pending patent application, you will probably be fine with or without an NDA. However, you should be careful to only disclose those elements that cannot be quickly reverse-engineered. And you should not submit your patent application with your disclosure as this will enable their engineers to get around your patent with impunity.