How to Use a Non-Disclosure Agreement

A nondisclosure agreement is often used by business owners who want to protect ideas they share with others from being stolen.  Like every contract, it’s only as good as the people signing, but I discovered the other day that business owners don’t always know HOW to handle a nondisclosure agreement.

I met with a potential client the other day who had e-mailed his nondisclosure agreement as the cover sheet for the packet of information he was trying to protect.  He believed that because the NDA was the first page, the recipient agreed to the terms of the NDA simply by opening the file.  I told him he could hand me a piece of paper that said “Gina will give me a kidney” and I could read it all day long without agreeing to it.

If you are using a nondisclosure agreement to protect yourself, make sure you get the SIGNED agreement back before you send out the confidential information.