Is there any way to safely disclose business plans/ideas to possible investors without fear of your ideas/plans being stolen/released? I have a great idea but fear of this is making me consider funding it myself.
As usual, IANAL. You need to have an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) drafted by an attorney and signed by all parties you want to share your ideas with. If your idea can be copyrighted or trademarked in any way before you show anyone, that would be a good deterrent to prevent someone from trying to claim your idea as theirs.
Only show your plan to real investors. They won't sign an NDA, but if they don't give you money for the idea, they don't have time to steal it from you anyway... Like Kommunicate said, have an NDA for other investors. Just make sure they know that if they steal your idea they are screwed (you may need to exaggerate that point to deter them.)
Awesome, I highly doubt I can get a good copyright or trademark on it, as others can spin a slight variation and it would still do the same thing. Can a NDA be signed online and held up on that fact? or will I have to fax it?
If it is an idea then basically you cannot protect it. An NDA in theory does protect it but how can you prove that they didnt get the idea from another source? NDAs are good to protect data not ideas but they are still a good way to weed out undesirables who either dont know the reality of NDAs. If you are talking about international investers then the nda holds both less water and less of the fear factor
I talked with a lawyer within the family, so I have free legal representation, and she said exactly that. My lawyer said that ideas can be easily protected by a NDA. You need to clearly state your idea, and if you do so it will be clearly obvious to a court as to where they obtain the idea. My lawyer also recommended that I only deal with possible investors within the U.S.A. The only reason certain people will break a NDA is when they believe they will not be sued. With free legal representation It's easier for me . P.S: You don't need to prove he got the idea from someone else, if he signs the NDA he cannot ever use that idea. Ever.
Of cause he can..... A non-disclosure agreement (the clue is in the name) means that you cannot tell other people what you have been told specifically by the other party under the NDA. It does not prevent you from telling others information gained from another source even if it is information you have received from someone you have signed an NDA with. Taking it to a silly extreme to highlight the point, under your theory of an NDA, if you signed one with me and I told you your nick on this forum was DiscussNow then you could never let anyone know that was your nick. Is this truly how you think an NDA works??????? Now that we have the theory straight... but to recap if you still dont get it, if someone receives the same information from a secondary source the NDA is not binding for them on that secondary source as there is no NDA between them and the second source and you. Therefore if you come to an investor and tell them you have an amazing idea of creating purple blutak they could go away, start making purpletak and when you challenged them under the NDA they can bring up pritty much anyone to stand up and say that they had in deed approached them with the idea for purpletak which they had dreamed up in the shower. Damned difficult for you to disprove. If you however disclose full breakdown of your revenue streams with current profit sharing arrangements to someone under an NDA it would be next to impossible for them to claim to have received this information from a secondary source as it is information that purely your company would know. What it sounds like you may be confusing things with is an anti-competition agreement which prevents them from entering in competition with you. It is rarely ever "ever" as you put it but for a predetermined period. These are fully enforceable though international aspects may make enforcement an issue. You do however have to ensure that there is the correct balance between restriction and reasonableness. These have recently become a significant issue in the UK with a significant number successfully challenged as being too restrictive. The broader the restriction the shorter the timescale you can expect to be enforceable or the greater the amount of additional monies you will have to pay. For example, if you wanted Astaroth Solutions to sign an ACA which prevented us from developing any websites within the 2 years following developing one for yourselves to safeguard against us copying any of the code we have created for yourselves then that would be fine. You would however have to pay us getting on for the 2 year projected income to reimburse us. If you failed to the courts would almost certainly declare it unenforceable as you cannot unduly prevent someone from earning a living
Obviously he can disclose stuff that wasn't listed under the NDA.... thats obvious and I never argued against it. I may be misunderstanding you but I believe you are wrong about an NDA. If a person uses/discloses anything listed in the NDA, then he can be sued. Of course if someone does not make profit off your idea then sueing isn't worth it. And once again, it is extremely easy to prove they got the idea from you.... they signed the agreement. It doesn't matter if the signers best friend tells him the idea a week later, the signer cannot use that idea.. Maybe you have heard of the company 3M. All their employees sign extremely strict NDA's. 3M has rights to ideas they think of, at home/vacation/whatever. 3M has sued many times and won when people jump ship with an idea they thought up. I also live in a business friendly state, so winning a clear NDA violation would be cake.
Sounds more like a non-compete agreement, which would also be signed by the employees as part of their contract.
I didnt say that they cant be sued just that it is highly unlikely to succeed because it only covers what you are told under the NDA and not what you hear elsewhere. For an idea it is easy to claim the information you were talking about was gained from another source not part of an NDA. For private data it isnt possible to do this which is why NDAs are good in these examples. As per the comments above, the 3M was a anti-competitor agreement rather than a non-disclosure agreement though often the two are combined into a single document.