Twelve Tips of Christmas: Tip 9: Don’t tell the World

Whether you have an idea for a new product and are looking for people to help you with the design or manufacture it is important to make sure you protect your intellectual property.

If you chat to ANYONE about your product without putting a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in place, you risk everything! If you do not have an NDA in place, there is nothing stopping the people you talk to from discussing your ideas with anyone, or worse still exploiting your ideas for their own profit. This is particularly important at the early stages of a project, where you do not ave enough of a design in place to warrant protecting the ides with Design Right or even Patents.

Having an NDA in place before you talk to people lets them know you are serious about your product and will take action in the event of them disclosing your ideas or designs to anyone else without your permission.

There are many free NDA templates available online. If you put the term “Free Non Disclosure Agreement” into the search engine of your choice you will find loads of links. The best we found was on the Governments Website. However, as with anything, we would highly recommend having any document you choose to use checked by a legal professional.

Want more Tips?

If you would like to receive hints and tips directly into your inbox, please sign up here…