Non Disclosure Agreements

Can't tell you, sorry.
 
NDA's are a typical tool attached to contracts between two parties wishing to develop something together. They only control the actions of the signing parties. They can be weighted one way, or be evenly applied, & can be prescriptive in terms of allowable actions.

In answer to your question, they're designed to be difficult for those who want to know, & can be quite restrictive for those who do. There's no rigid format applied, they're usually custom to the circumstances, although there are typical NDA templates used frequently.
 
I'm sure you'll notice post #4 above - I probably edited it while you were typing.

A bit of levity.
Ah - got it :)

LOL
Thanks for the reply, but I was thinking more along the lines of manufacturer's reps who post on forums before big product announcements (think NAMM).

Some of them I've seen, at other forums, are just chomping at the bit, itching to 'spill the beans' of what they know.
They can barely restrain themselves, and I can understand it.
It's my understanding though, that they've signed NDA's. Consumers interested in changes to products they're considering are just as anxious to know.
It's a strange game.

.
They probably have an NDA attached to their contract of employment, if not, they're simply under instructions to drum up (groan) as much interest as possible through the usual teaser marketing technique, & to under no circumstances reveal the actual news/development. Even if I was interested, I'm not rising to it. I'd rather people worked transparently by coming here & stating the facts. Just tell people what you've done, why you've done it, & stick around to answer questions.

Ask yourself this - how much does the product actually cost to make, when they can afford to spend so much money on shallow spin. I guess it works for some people, & obviously gets results.
 
They are probably hardest for the one on the short end of the lawsuit....but do not protect parties from illeagl activities such as intellectual property theft.

You cannot legally contract or be legally bound to perform illegal acts or keep them confidential...learned that in grade school social studies.
 
I do have not any experience with the NDA's in the music industry, only as an engineer and those NDA's were for protection mostly towards patent intellectual property (IP) and trade secrets.

As a mechanical design engineer, I've had to sign many of those NDA's. Mainly, the company is interested in protecting their intellectual property they hired the engineer to develop. This is the part that makes sense and the way it should work. The company hires the engineer, programmer, or businessman to develop a product, apparatus, method, software or business method, and they want to be able to bring to market. The company paid for the research in the first place.

A company may also want to prevent their competition from gaining an insight about the companies business. Many times the company will rely on “trade secrets” to prevent their competition from finding out about their workings. “Trade secrets” do not offer the same protection that a patent, trademark, or copyright will give. But, “trade secrets” will afford some protection. The patent will expire in 20 years, and there is no renewal unless the company is able to come up with another patent that uses the parent patent in such a way as to give them some exclusive rights. A patent is also published and open to the public, so there is no secrecy, unless the patent is classified for the government or military.

Sometimes a worker will be given the NDA to sign to prevent the worker from working in the same industry. That will stop some workers, but not professionals in fields, and where the employee was hired because of their previous experience in special fields.

The NDA’s in this case protect companies from loosing their trade secrets to their competition. But, sometimes the NDA's go too far when the company sees an opportunity to cash in on any intellectual property that an employee may have been working on outside the company time and location, regardless if it had any relation to what the employee did for or with the company.

I was hired for one company, many years ago, that had their NDA so broad that if I wrote a fictional novel or wrote a song, they wanted to gain profits from just me being allowed to go through their front door to work everyday. This company, wanted to go far beyond the IP for patents. They wanted to extend their control to IP that may have been related to art, music or novels. They could not prevent me from working in engineering, because I had previous experience and education prior to my employment.
 
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I can't tell you, that I can't tell you, that I can't tell you...........
 
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