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Partnering |
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What Is It? |
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Who Owns It? |
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Documentation |
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Confidentiality |
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Licensing |
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Tax Advantages |
Inventors, particularly new ones, tend to be afraid to disclose anything about their inventions for fear that someone will steal their once-in-a-lifetime idea. An outright theft of ideas is unusual in the bio-medical field, but all parties need to be protected in some way.
Surprisingly, companies need protection from inventors as well as the other way around. For example, what happens if you have a great new concept for a product and present it to a company who just happens to be secretly working on the same thing. They will decline your offer, and then when their product comes out, there is likely to be a lawsuit. Even if the company wins, there is a lot of bad publicity and considerable legal expense. Therefore, companies are often unwilling to look an any inventions unless the inventor signs some type of disclosure agreement which can protect them as well as you
First, you should make sure that you have an actual invention. Next, you should thoroughly document your ideas. After this, you will need to sign some type of agreement, commonly referred to a "Confidentiality Agreement" or a "Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)". Note that anything that is verbally presented to a third party should also be accompanied by the same material in writing and marked CONFIDENTIAL.