Confidentiality Agreement for Business Partners
A confidentiality agreement for business partners is used when you need to share critical confidential information as part of the course of business.3 min read
A confidentiality agreement for business partners is used when you need to share critical confidential information with contractors, vendors, funders, and other professionals as part of the course of business. This is also called a nondisclosure agreement (NDA). Having partners sign this agreement gives you legal recourse if proprietary information is stolen and used.
Purpose of a Confidentiality Agreement
The text of this type of agreement states that the other party agrees not to disclose any information learned during the course of business to any third-party. An NDA is legally binding. Common items included in an NDA are processes, trade secrets, recipes, technical specs, chemical formulas, customer lists, and business plans.
Any aspect of your business that you want to keep confidential can be protected. For example, if you have designed a new product and want to get a manufacturing estimate, you can ask the manufacturing company to sign a confidentiality agreement so they won't share your design with others or use it for profit themselves.
Confidentiality agreements are also useful when you hire new employees or are negotiating with potential investors or new business partners.
Types of Confidentiality Agreements
Most confidentiality agreements can be customized to the needs of your business. However, you can also choose from a few specific types of NDAs.
- Two businesses involved in a merger or acquisition often use a precedent confidentiality agreement (PCA). This allows the business making the purchase to review complete information about the assets and debts of the business being purchased. This information must then be kept confidential if the acquisition does not come to pass.
- With a one-way NDA, one business is providing information to another individual or business. A two-way NDA is used when two businesses are sharing information with one another. These are also called unilateral and bilateral NDAs.
- A multilateral NDA is used when three or more parties are sharing information.
Key Provisions of an NDA Agreement
Your confidentiality agreement should include the following sections and clauses:
- Indicate the disclosing party, which is the person or business sharing the confidential information. This is not necessarily the party who owns the information in question; it could be someone who is legally permitted to disclose the information for a specific purpose with permission.
- Indicate the receiving party, which is the person or business receiving the confidential information. Often, this is an individual or small department in a large company, which allows you to avoid binding an entire corporation with information that hasn't even been shared with everyone. Many institutions nominate one individual as the signor for confidentiality agreements. Those within an organization named as a receiving party may share the information only with other members of the organization unless the NDA states otherwise.