What do you need to help protect your innovation during the critical cultivation phase?  An NDA, that’s what. What is it? Simply put a contract that many inventors know little about. 

The basics of an NDA are such that the other party won’t share or take your idea and vice versa. Since any innovation takes the help, skills, and resources of other people from investors to vendors to collaborators, there is a need to talk with others willing to commit to confidentiality.

The first thing to think about when considering the execution of an NDA is the purpose of your interaction: Is it discussing a business opportunity?; bringing on an employee?; hiring a consultant?; or utilizing a vendor? These are times when you will want to have an NDA. What if you are just picking someone’s brain for information, or if someone is asking you for free advice? You might want to think about signing an NDA in these circumstances, or see if there is a way to be helpful without binding yourself to an agreement.

Cannuflow’s Ted Kucklick has much more to say about NDA’s in his June Medical Design article, “The ABCs of NDAs.”