NDA would not substitute for the patent. NDA is helpful for your legal case when the person who signed the NDA uses company's idea as his own. However, NDA is not useful when the person who signed the NDA reveal the idea to the third party.
On the other hand,patents protect the idea from the people who innocently and coincidentally come out with the same idea.
While a patent is a federal document providing ownership of an idea, NDA which is non disclosure agreement is just a simply contract between two people. NDA can provide people with a level of protection and NDA is not as powerful as patent since it provides no protection against independent creation by ohters, or even the disclosure organization if they can provide your information was not used.
An NDA is an acronym for a non-disclosure agreement. This type of agreement refers to a contract in which the parties involved will keep information shared between them confidential to others. This contract can be applied to court and possible punishments are involved if violated. Patent, on the other hand, deals with a proof of ownership of an idea where you own the rights to the design, process, and novelty of your patented idea. NDA and patents are different where they both branch from different types of law; contract law and patent law, respectively. A patent will protect you and your idea more since an NDA is a contract only between two people. Also, it is also important to point out that the definitions of contracts vary from state to state while the reach of a patent reaches farther because its federal.
Even though Non-Disclosure Agreement could have a perpetual time limit and should be theoretically protective to the commercial secrets between the two parties or within the company or institute. However, this is not powerful as a patent since it is not protected by the official government and thus, cannot protect your secret, for example, a crucial product material choice and design, from being plagiarized by other companies. On the other hand, NDA could be more useful than a patent for some family-run companies who greatly rely on their family recipe to maintain their product quality at a leading position among their competitors.
NDA is not a substitute for a patent. Patents give you a solid proof of ownership of an idea or a product itself whereas an NDA is just a contract that is signed by two people who promise to keep things confidential. I read an example on a website that really helped me understand the difference so I'd like to share it with you. Let's say you have an idea to develop something and you share that idea with person A and sign an NDA with them. If person A goes and makes your invention "as their own", you can sue them and win. However, if person A goes and tells person B about the idea and they decide the make the invention, you can't do anything about that since your NDA is only between you and person A. Patent is really the only way you can protect yourself fully.
In the paper we were given by Dr. Simon it stated that Patents help to protect your innovation when you are harvesting the fruits of your invention. However, how do you help protect your invention during the critical phase? This is were a NDA comes in.
NDAs are quick to do and are legally binding. NDAs state that you can talk about trade secrets. NDA’s can be one-way or two-way.
Patents have the ingredients of a concept that is original to the inventors. It is legal binding as well. But the purpose for NDA’s is relatively quicker and simpler for specific things to not be spoken upon.
A patent is a piece of paper that allows one to have ownership of an idea or invention. NDA is known as a non-disclosure agreement. It's an agreement in which people or companies agree to keep information confidential. So basically an agreement between two people. NDA gives you limited protection while a patent offers sole ownership. One issue is that it is sometimes difficult to get a patent but it is doable if you get good attorneys.
The difference between NDA and Patents is that NDA keeps a secret between to people and or companies, while patent provide ownership of the device product. I feel that if you are developing a device you can't patent it on the spot, it will take process before it is full developed. So on the meanwhile, NDA is required so others cannot use your idea because there was an agreement that none of the owner secret can be release to the public. NDA just keeps owner secret regarding device but if someone else creates same device then patents it, then the owner doesn't have claim to device, the one that patient will have all the control.
As you all mentioned above the main difference between Patent and NDA, That Patent protects your ownership of the idea not only on a project base but all over that no one can duplicate or claim your idea. also, you can collect money from companies want to integrate the idea in their design. for example, my current company is the one who designed the idea of the nano USB connector. so most of you using it for wireless mouses. And they do collect money from all other companies using the idea like Logitech. On the other hand, NDA is more to protect a project based and a mutual agreement. for example, We need it when you work with the company on a probatory design or highly confidential information. But If we don't sign it and work on the same idea, we have no legal issue against us.
One big diffrence between patent and NDA is that a patent is a federal document proving ownership of an idea, and NDA is an agreement between two people. NDA parties will keep information shared between them confidential to others. This contract can be applied to court and possible punishments are involved if violated. Also, NDA can provide people with a level of protection, but not strong as patent. So, Patent has a federal backing to. law is useful in cases where you can invest and develop your product without the involvement of a third party or their resources to harvest the benefits of the invention. It is important to patent certain things if it is extremely valuable and if losing it will cause detrimental harm to the company. Patent behave as the proof of ownership of the idea and as mentioned it's more powerful comparing to NDA in terms of the level of protection.
NDA only gives you protection from the individual in the contract, in which they promise to keep the idea confidential. A patent grants you proof of ownership and full protection for your idea. The main difference can be shown by an example - let's say you have an idea to develop something and you share that idea with person A and sign an NDA with them. If person A goes and makes your invention “as their own”, you can sue them and win. However, if person A goes and tells person B about the idea and they make the invention, you can’t do anything about that. Thus patent is a higher level of protection and ownership of your idea, and grants you protection from anyone who may come up with a similar idea.
An NDA and a patent are two very different things. A patent is something that legally gives you full rights over an idea or a product and protects your idea as your own. This prevents others from claiming your idea as their own and suing you for using it. An NDA, or non-disclosure agreement, is something that is signed by all those involved in the project that restricts them from talking about it. For example, if you are unhappy at your current company and would rather work at another one, an NDA would prevent you from taking a recent idea that you signed an agreement for and bringing the details of it to the next company, preventing them from working on a similar/the same product. While it may not protect your idea and give you ownership of it like a patent does, an NDA is a helpful tool that prevents ideas from being leaked to rival companies.
An NDA is most certainly not a patent. An NDA is basically two parties agreeing that they will not tell anyone about the information in questions. It is more akin to a trade secret than a patent. A patent is you telling the world how you did something but the government then telling everyone that they cannot copy what you did for a set period of time. An NDA is much more fitting for early in the research stage, during the pre-clinical research phase. At this point there isn't enough information generated yet to warrant a patent, but the company doing the development will not want others finding out about it, so they will ask those involved to sign an NDA. A patent is needed once the project hit clinical trials, as the company will need to disclose the information about the device, but they will be afforded legal protections in doing so.
I think an NDA can facilitate the road to obtaining a patent. An NDA can help protect the idea from getting into the wrong hands, and legally allows you to discuss information without worrying about leaking it. You would have all parties present sign an NDA before a patent is even issued.
A patent protects intellectual property for a set amount of time. So if you don't need to discuss pertinent information with others you can apply for a patent without ever creating an NDA.
NDA can be useful when the same person or a company that signed the NDA goes ahead with the idea. When you have a patent, however, and someone replicates whatever is covered by your patent, your prior relationship with that company matters very little. When you have a patent, even people who innocently and coincidentally come out with the same product could be held liable for patent infringement.
But NDA is bad when you attempt to use an NDA as your sole protection, especially when disclosing your idea to people you don’t know and trust fully. If patent protection is available, just having filed for a patent prior to disclosing the idea to a company will put you in a much better position. Filing the application will establish your priority and can prevent them from attempting to patent the idea themselves.The question typically is whether what you have is patentable. If what you have is valuable, and losing it would be devastating or even detrimental to you or your company, it’s worth having an evaluation performed to find out if it is patentable.
