What kinds of confidentiality releases protect my invention?
When you're communicating your product, you need to be protected, and three of the forms that are most used are your non-disclosure, which means if I share this idea with you, you will not tell anybody. I call it the "hush-hush form," I call it the "super secret" "loose lips sink ships" form. Non-disclosure is like, you sign this and you cannot tell anybody about this idea. Pretty simple. Then you have what is called a non-circumvention form. Non-circumvention is a tricky contract but the premise is that if you sign it, you cannot go around me to another competitor and share or sell my idea to him. You have to go through me, I own this right. You can't circumvent me. So we've got non-disclosure, non-circumvention and non-compete. Non-compete is if I share the idea with you, and then you are making the widget next week -- that doesn't work for me and you signed a form that says you can't compete with me. Non-competes are really designed when people are working in your company and they are very privy to your inventive process. Non-competes are really best designed for inventions that are systems. And I know people say, "How can a system be patented?" There could be a very unique process in your organization that makes it unique, and that is patentable. It's tough to get, but you can get it, and that is called a non-compete. So, if you go to a company and you are working for an inventor and he has you sign a Non-disclosure, a non-circumvention and a non-compete, the compete clause is to prevent you from competing with him. It's also used in manufacturing. So as an inventor, many times I don't make the product. I have somebody else make it. If a manufacturer makes my product, I must have, every year, an updated non-compete. They are making my product. What will prevent them from selling it? The non-compete clause.
