In response to my teleclass announcement, I had an inquiry from a reader in Illinois who was wondering how she could protect her idea for a product aimed at children and young adults.
The first thing to recognize is that intangible ideas cannot, in general, be protected — not by using traditional copyright or trademark (or other) forms of intellectual property protection. Before there’s anything tangible to copyright, or used in trade to trademark, there’s an idea that needs to be fleshed out. Or that needs money to help develop it. Your product idea may not have reached the stage where it’s ripe for that kind of intellectual property protection. If you and I are sitting at a bar, and you’re waxing lyrical about the idea (especially any details about it), anyone overhearing you can pick up on the idea and run with it.
That’s where a confidentiality agreement comes into play. Regardless of the embryonic (or other) stage of your idea, it offers a certain level of protection, letting the signer know that you intend to take action if violated. When worded correctly, the agreement provides that your sensitive information will be kept confidential and will not be disclosed for any purpose.
If you truly believe that your idea has value, RUN – don’t walk – to an intellectual property attorney in your area to get a proper confidentiality agreement that you can use. Download from the Internet all you want, but let the attorney have the final say. He or she will know better than you whether the wording really protects you, or whether there are missing parts that it should contain. If your idea is so spectacular that it deserves protection, a properly-worded confidentiality agreement shows to others that you’re not a rube and that you DO mean business. It’s an excellent screening tool, because if someone refuses to sign it, that should raise a flag that there are issues you need to be concerned with.
Don’t let the prospect of finding a good attorney daunt you. Visit my free podcast on Choosing and Using Attorneys Wisely so that you’ll know which questions to ask!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Intellectual Property. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “How Entrepreneurs Can Protect Their Ideas”
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June 24th, 2007 at 8:14 am
hi i have every person i deal with sign confidentiality. but i have found that it does not really protect you because unless you are willing to pour tons of money into a lawsuit, and most small people dont have tons of money, then what can you do?
second, i have signed conf with a company and now it doesnt look like they are going to move forward on the collaboration. what can i do if they take my idea and implement it ie use it without me? they are in brazil and i am in the usa. i have to sue them in the usa? do they then have to come to the usa to be tried? how does that nda work when you have to implement it if they cross the line, if they are in another country?
April 24th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Hi I just had a neat idea and have started working on it.
This is just the begining for me and I do not plan to sell to individual stores or anything big at this time. I will be using things like ebay or craigslist to get started. IS it ok just to test my product out first and see if it even takes off before I get some kind of confidentiality agreement. How do you know when you should paten an idea.