To NDA or Not To NDA

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey everyone, welcome back to product Launch Hazards. This is Tracy and Tom and we are going to talk about to NDA or not to NDA and wow.

You know what, this is something we have a lot of experience with. Right.

Some people might not even know what NDA stands for. Oh, all right, let's define right.

Non disclosure agreement. You may have heard this many times, people advising you, oh, if you've got something new and you're going to talk to somebody, make sure you sign, have them sign an NDA, a non disclosure agreement so that they won't disclose it to the public.

Right. So let's talk a little bit about sort of our, just a brief part because we're going to touch on that more in other episodes and. Or we already have and some. And so we have this process that we go where we want to keep legal out of any kind of negotiations or reviews when we're in early stage talks with a company, whether they're going to be a client, whether they're going to be a licensing partner, whether we want to sell them our designs. The sooner you get lawyers involved, the longer it will take. And I don't say that to be mean to lawyers for it's just a part of the process. And then once you get a legal department or you seem like a hassle, you've already put yourself in this adversarial position. And so like it's like, you want me to sign what? And now they don't like you and they're not open to your idea and they're not open to your product and it's just gonna start things off badly. So that's really where we say, hey, we understand protection and we want you to be protected and we want ourselves to be protected, but we want to also do it in a way that makes business flow faster.

Yeah, you know what, I wanna take a step back and really be very transparent. In the beginnings of our careers, more than, I guess, 25 years ago. You know what, we definitely subscribed to the non disclosure agreement process and you know, we were on the bandwagon, if you will. Right.

There is a lawyer, you know, we know.

And even though my stepfather's attorney, he's a different kind of attorney. Honestly not a corporate, you know, contract attorney. We definitely had an attorney in our business, in our tea tools business with the stylus pens in the palm economy.

Was like we had an attorney back in college.

That's right. Because we were actually had been inventing things and had a patent attorney back in college. And when you have a patent you always worry about oh, I'm going to disclose this patent and how does that affect my ability to get a patent. And you know, I think often even still today, patent attorneys and other kinds of attorneys, if you're going to disclose something proprietary to anyone outside of your company, might suggest have a non disclosure agreement. Now I want to preface this with I am not an attorney. Okay?

So the we are not attorneys.

The advice we're giving is just for your reference and for your information, I'm giving you our opinion from our business.

Experience and how we operate so that you understand how we operate.

But in the early days we definitely did any new invention we had people sign a non disclosure agreement, especially if a patent had not issued yet or and more importantly even if it had not been filed yet. We did that with palm computing I believe, or actually at the time it was US Robotics, I think where we had them sign a non disclosure agreement when we, you know, shared with them this, you know, the original prototype for this invention, which was the stylus pen. We talked about that in another Office Hour episode in the very first one, very first one. And we definitely did it and we believed it was important. But over many years of practical experience our opinion on this has evolved.

Right. And so what we've seen is that it can really, depending on the size of the corporation, it can really slow down the process depending on the perspective of who you're giving it to. They can just be like, it's not worth hearing your idea. I'm not signing any agreement. And we get a lot of people who are like that over time. And so what we've come is to saying, even proposing to use a non disclosure agreement, it can already set you in the wrong position for negotiations or the wrong position for getting your idea presented in an open minded mindset. And that's what we want, want them to be open minded and excited and interested in hearing our idea. And so because of that we switched to practicing let's file provisional patents instead of non disclosure agreements. Because in the provisional patent, you know, once it's filed, your protection is starting. Now I know there's like lots of legal arguments as how that governs, but as far as we're concerned is we just go in there with this confidences. Yeah, hey, we filed patents and it's going to issue and we have a 95% issuance rate. There's only one patent that we ever filed that didn't issue and it's because we didn't file it, we didn't write it. Some other, other company that we developed it for did and we told them it was terrible and they didn't listen.

Yeah, we weren't in control of the process. You know, in the early days we didn't have the experience to really know the difference of what a good patent application was and what a not so great patent application was. Now I mean we do have a lot more experience with it. And when we read a patent application we can really tell if it's got teeth, if it doesn't, if it's, you know, got a likelihood of being issued as long as some other prior art doesn't show up in the process.

So this is part of our process. So let's say that we do do a lot of research. We do do prior art research. We do a lot of it ourselves because we want to make sure that we've googled it, we've Amazon, you know, we've checked all the places in which it can be. There are patent libraries out there. There are online Google patents. It's easy to use, so you should do your check. And I cannot tell you how many times I get an inventor in front of me who says, oh, I want you to sign a non disclosure agreement. And I go to Google what they say and I'm like, no, it's publicly available and you're already coming to me and asking me to sign something because you think this is such a secret. You haven't even done your homework yet. That's where people are in this position. And like I've heard it all. And we get a lot of companies and corporations who believe that not an invented hear syndrome, that's what we call it, NIHs not invented here syndrome. Because they're already like, I don't want to hear any new ideas because we've heard them all. And if I have to sign a non disclosure agreement to do it, then I can't capitalize on the ideas we already have going on in our organization. And I'm not going to start there.

So yeah, so let's talk about sort of why this happens from the perspective of the company or business person you might be disclosing your invention or proprietary product to.

Yeah, so Using us. So like you want to present an idea to us as you're talking about this, Tom? Because I think that would be helpful.

We could do that, sure. So you want to present an idea to us, you supply me with a nondisclosure agreement. If it's anything more than a one pager and truly mutual, Meaning that the conditions on which I'm agreeing to not disclose it are also conditions under which you know that they are applying to you as the discloser as well as to the person you're disclosing them to. And if they're not, very basic, broad brush. Meaning if I seen it hurting, if I've experienced something before, if I've seen something that is the same, I don't have to keep it quiet. Basically don't have to keep this confidential or you know, if it ends up becoming public without me making it public, if it becomes public some other way through another party, then I don't have to keep it confidential. And then the same thing, you know, same things apply to you. Basically. If it's a one sided agreement where it's all on me, I can't disclose it for years or in perpetuity for any reason, I'm never going to sign that. And if it gets beyond a one page agreement and beyond, you know, our ability as seasoned business people to evaluate if this is reasonable or not. If I have to get my lawyer involved to review this before, you know, I'll be able to sign it and then have this meeting for you, which a lot of times is an initial consultation that isn't costing you anything, then I'm not going to go spend money with my attorney.

That's also where we draw the line. We draw the line as like, look, if you're having a free consult with us because you want our expert opinion and those kinds of things and then you want us to sign a non disclosure agreement when that could prevent us from helping other people, then we won't do it. So it's just kind of one of those things where like if you're contracted with us, of course we already have.

It in our contract.

It's confidentiality, non disclosure. All of those things are built into our contract. But when you're not even paying a dime for someone to review your idea yet and you put all this legal stuff in front of them, it makes them go, you know what, I don't think it's worth it.

Well, that's the thing. If I've got to go spend money from the get go in order to have Even an initial conversation with you, that makes me a lot less motivated to want to have that conversation. Now, let's take it. If it's a big corporation, a big corporation that a lot of different inventors or companies are pitching ideas to them or products for them to buy, or intellectual property for them to buy, whatever the business arrangement might be, you bring them a non disclosure agreement. First of all, you're wanting to get time with someone, presumably an executive at this company. It's been hard enough to get to that person. When you finally get through to them and schedule the meeting. Now, if a prerequisite to that meeting is you want them to sign a legal document that puts on the brakes in a hurry, they got to get their legal department involved. And you've really, like Tracy said before, you've changed the tone of the conversation from building anticipation. Hey, I have something wonderful. It's going to help your company. It's a big opportunity for your company. Don't you want to see this to then hold on, you know, do we want to see. I'm not going to. You know, it kind of sets up this ego situation. Hey, I've got this amazing thing saying you're just this company, you need to sign it before I'm going to disclose it to you. And here you are just trying to get a meeting with somebody. It really changes the tone of the conversation, changes the mindset from anticipation and excitement over what you have to being defensive, being apprehensive, considering all the risk before you even get to what the sizzle is that you're going to show them.

Right? So I just want to really preface this by we're talking about this as an entry thing. There are times at which you contract with someone. You're going to go in, you need information from a factory, from other places, and you're going to dive deeper into that non disclosure agreement. But what we're talking about is that's the first thing you ask. And I get it all the time. It happens to me. They're like, I want a consult with you. I need your expert opinion. Oh, but I need you to sign a non disclosure agreement. And I'd be like, then you have to pay for my time. Because it's inherently in my hourly rate that I will have that covered. But it's just we want to make sure that their first pass is not putting up a blocker to you getting value back from it for you to get that meeting, for you to be able to build a relationship and anticipation on hearing your full idea. Now we don't want you to disclose stuff you shouldn't.

Right.

Be very careful.

And there's probably a lot of ways you can have a conversation about your product without disclosing what's truly proprietary you're trying to protect. Maybe that's, you know, a approach you want to take. If you really, you know, do feel you need a nondisclosure at some level, well, find a way to talk about it where you don't. But I want to talk about sort of the lawyer situation. Look, I like lawyers. I have family members that are lawyers. I have good friends that are lawyers. My kickboxing coach is our attorney and he's a great person. But attorneys are always going to take a certain approach and here's what it is. If their client is given a non disclosure agreement from a third party, they immediately don't trust that language. They want to review it and make sure it's right. And here's the reality of attorneys I've learned over a lot of hard experience, is that no attorney likes the language that any other attorney creates. From the get go. They all would prefer that a contract were written their way with the language they would use, not the language someone else would use. So you get the situation where you have a lawyer for each side arguing over or arguing or maybe is the wrong word. It can even just be negotiating, discussing, working out the language between the two of them of what this document is going to be that's going to satisfy both sides. It just brings everything to a screeching halt to work this out. And maybe in two, three weeks, a month, you'll be able to have this business conversation you wanted to have in the first place. And so it's just been our experience that if you truly have something proprietary worth protecting, that you're that concerned to have somebody sign a non disclosure agreement, we find it's much less expensive and a path of least resistance that if it's that important, we're going to protect it. We're either going to file a copyright on it or a trademark on it, or we're going to file a provisional patent application, which is quite inexpensive compared to a normal patent application. Once you file it, you have a date that you've solidified that if you're the first to file for this invention, and you must believe that you are, if you've gone ahead to spend the time and money to file an application, you're the first to file. So you have some inherent rights, assuming your patent gets issued down the road in the long run. And if it doesn't get issued, you didn't have anything to protect in the first place. So file that provisional application and we feel very comfortable and free to disclose the invention at that point.

Yeah, so what that looks like is, is that we usually go in the meeting, we get them energized, we talk about the things that, the marketing opportunities, you know, the gap in the market, what the product fills. We do the same kind of emotional thing you would do with someone, you want to make that connection with someone who might want to consume it, the buyer. Right. And so we set that up and then when it gets talking to the details and they start asking that details, we just say we act either really confident in the fact that, hey, we've already filed a provisional patent and we're really confident that we've got this, we've done our research and we've done our homework and we are absolutely sure we have something that is going to issue. So yes, we're happy to talk to you about that in detail and. Or you say, you know, some of this is patented and some of this is proprietary. I don't feel comfortable disclosing every single detail in our how to. Let's have a follow up discussion after we further solidify our relationship with either file a letter of intent, get to the next stage, contract together, and then we'll go forward. On the flip side of that, when somebody's presenting to me and I think they're stepping over the line to something I don't want to hear because that can happen also that sometimes I'm like, I think they shouldn't be disclosing this to me. I stop them and I say, you know what, I think we should need to stay in the why and the how and not in the what. We'll come back to that when the time comes. And so I'm actually really, I try to be really cognizant of that and be really good about stopping people from talking about that and saying, your lawyer probably wouldn't be too happy if you disclose that to me right now. And so, but not everybody's like that. And so you have to be really careful because sometimes, I mean, if you've ever watched Silicon Valley or any of those kind of TV shows, you see how they go in and they're like there for a brain session because they're going to invest in you and they start disclosing all the how to and they steal it. All right? Because a lot of that stuff in software especially is not patentable nowadays. And it's really hard to get an issued patent in almost anything software related right now. Process patents can happen and things like that. But when you're talking about that complex, that proprietary knowledge is extremely important and you want to keep your secret in there and wait for that non disclosure, but you want to bait them and get them excited to want that, to feel that you're the only person who can deliver that to them. And so you want to get through that stage of that before you head into it. And then, then's the time to have a non disclosure discussion, but make it their idea.

So there's another thing I'd like to share with you in terms of this whole issue of to have an NDA or not to have an NDA. And that is practical reality. Okay? Generally if you want someone to sign an NDA in order to disclose your proprietary subject matter to them, you're most often a smaller fish in a bigger pond. Okay? You are the David, they're the Goliath. That's, that's most often the case.

There's a little bit of difference there in sort of in the model of maybe you set up a platform, you've got a whole product that's going to have third party developers work on it. Now you're the big fish in there because they all want to develop with you, right? There's an obvious non disclosure agreement involved in that. Hey, you want this opportunity, you're going to be a part of that. But you have to be really sure that you're that big fish in that process. And it can also work that way when you're working with factories and you're going to bid out with factories.

But regardless of whether you're the little fish in this scenario, you're the David or you're the Goliath. Here's the reality of it. You sign a non disclosure agreement, you both sign it. You then discover, or I say suspect that the other party who signed the agreement breached the agreement, they disclosed it and they shouldn't have. Your entire remedy to cure that breach is to sue them. That's the only remedy. You have to force them to perform on that agreement or to enforce that agreement. You've got to sue them for breach of contract, have some damages that you claim that you incurred and then to try to sue them for money to cure that damage, to compensate you for that damage, to cure that breach. That is a very long process, it is not fun and it is very costly. And you've got to put up all the money to, to wage that Fight.

And the burden of proof is on you.

Absolutely.

Which is really hard to find. The disclosure. See, the emails do all of those things that may have occurred in that disclosure. And it has happened to us.

It has happened where we've showed somebody something and then we suspected they've disclosed it because we heard from some other person in the industry that came around to us that, you know, we were talking to this to some other company.

Offended because they weren't first.

Right.

And that's how it happened. They were like, hey, how come you didn't give this to me first? And you know, and that's a really interesting dynamic. And one of them was our customer and he comes back to us and says, why didn't you give this to me first? And the reality was he wasn't best poised to exploit it and to get it to market. The other company was. So that's why we went to them first. But now we've hurt our relationship. Well, and that's an intangible damage.

It is. And the reality is we go to the company we disclosed to and says, hey, so we understand from this third party, you guys disclose it. And they said, well, I don't believe we have. What's your evidence? Proof to me that we disclosed it. And they're right. The burden of proof is on us, you know, and it's very hard to get that kind of proof. So you can see how this becomes really complicated. You sign an NDA, both parties, and you have this level of comfort, okay, good, I'm protected. They've signed an NDA. Well, are you really protected? I mean, the reality is you're only protected to the extent that you have the money to try to enforce that contract, to sue them for it. So that really becomes a no win situation. We always believe much more practical to protect ourselves in the most practical way possible. And most often we've found that's filing an appropriate intellectual property application for whatever it is, copyright, trademark or a patent for a product, and then have the confidence that, yeah, we really know we invented something novel here and ultimately we'll get a patent for it and then, you know, we're free to disclose it. Now keep in mind too, when it comes to patents, even though you've filed for a patent, and you may, you know, we live in a first to file world here, and that's maybe another subject we'll take a deeper dive into someday. But if you filed an application first, it doesn't matter if anybody filed for an application after you. If you're the first to file, and it is truly a worthy invention. You will get your patent for it. So you will ultimately have the exclusive rights to manufacture, import, or sell that item. And so that's great. So be satisfied with that and go on and move forward and freely disclose it. But keep in mind, even though you've filed a patent application until it issues when you disclose it, anybody else absolutely is not violating the law. If they've seen what you've disclosed to them, they work faster than you manufacture it and bring it to market and sell it sooner than you. They're allowed to do that. Absolutely. But once your patent issues, then they will be infringing on your patent. If they truly are selling, marketing, manufacturing, importing something that infringes on your patent, you'll be able to stop them at that time, but you don't have the power to stop them until your patent issues. But usually it's enough of a deterrent and a big risk for any other company to go ahead and do that because they got to invest a lot of money, put a lot of resources into it, buy inventory, distribute it, to unwind that, or to have risked that money and then not be able to sell it eventually down the road is usually enough a deterrent to keep a company or a factory or any other third party from going ahead and willingly violating the potential of your intellectual property. Usually even factories, we find respect that.

Yeah, so that's kind of our broad take on NDAs and how we use them and how we operate. And obviously we were really clear here. We really want to set up a position which people are open and, and excited. And really we want to find if there's a joint venture possibility, licensing possibility. We want to find that excitement in the process. And it's really hard to do it when you got all this legal hurdles in front of you. And that's what an NDA feels like for most, most people. And for most companies, it actually is a time, time lengthener, like the opposite of a time saver. And we don't want that. We want timely information. We want to get, are you the right partner? Are you not? Are you the right factory? Are you not?

Yeah, you want to move quickly, you want to get down to business and profit. Right. And so what we just find it's not the most expedient way to do business at this point, after a lot of experience.

Right now there are different businesses, different types of models of business where there's lots of proprietary information, software companies, as I refer to apps, all of those kinds of Things operate in a totally different model. We're talking about specifically for consumer products and our experience doing consumer and industrial products because we've done hard goods. Right. Something that you would file a patent for that are more tangible, that don't necessarily have as much proprietary knowledge in how they're produced or made or developed and brought to market. So little bit different. So we just want to kind of make sure that you're really clear on that. So Tom, we have a couple of questions that I've come through, came through the platform ahead of time. Someone wants to know if we have a mutual non disclosure agreement that we would be happy to share. And we do.

Yeah, we do. We have what we have used in the past and experienced and believe is a truly mutual non disclosure agreement. That is if you really do feel, you know, just for your own business purposes that you need to have someone or you want to have someone sign an NDA or maybe they've sent you one that's very one sided and you want to come back with one that's truly mutual. We do have an example. It's in our resource library, I believe.

Yes, absolutely.

Hazards. And keep in mind again, we want to preface this. We are not attorneys, we are not providing legal advice. We're providing practical business experience opinion for.

You and an example of what we use.

Yes. So that document is available. If you're going to use it long term, you may want to have your attorney look at it because maybe in your state there are some unique aspects to the law in that state that are not addressed in the example document we're giving you. So it's meant to be a starting point and an example.

And there's certainly flavors of non disclosures. Like there are some that deal with arbitration, there are some that deals with penalties, actual penalties of disclosure. And you know, ours is not. Ours is very straightforward, simple, one pager, not even a full page. It's like three quarters of a page. And it's really just about like, you know, when we use it, it's actually the same language that's in contracts. And so confidentiality and non disclosure kind of go hand in hand with what we do. Which actually ties to the second question that I. So the second question is, is that like is. I noticed that. So let me read it here.

Yeah, just read it, make sure you get it right.

I noticed that when I booked an appointment with you and that's you can book an appointment, a one on one and this was a free consult that you had me click that I'm Agreeing to the terms of service and privacy policy. And that has in and of itself, and we do it a little bit differently in the product launch hazards group is it's not a non disclosure per se is it's just a code of conduct. So we expect to have, hey, I'm evaluating doing business. I need expert advice from you. We expect a code of conduct among our members and our experts especially, we expect a code of conduct that we're holding everybody's information confidential. If we don't believe it's private, if we don't believe it's confidential, we want to disclose that to you and let you know, hey, I've already heard this before from about five other people or I googled this, I checked it on Amazon and I found something that's exactly like what you were talking about. We had happened to a client, we, they were like, they thought they had some really original idea and I Amazon did.

And there it was, I mean the feature and it was a significant part of what this other company was promoting. And so they were devastated. But at the same time, sometimes that's a good thing to have competition. We can talk about that whole other episode but like, hey, it showed that there was value in what they wanted to do. And in the process we actually came up with something, some other invention that was actually even better and built off of that in a much better way. So it's not a done deal like, oh, I should quit.

Not always.

We never believe in that.

That may mean there's a market for it, which is more important than anything.

Right, right. But so we want to encourage people to feel comfortable that this is our code of conduct. So we have that in our own booking calendar. Not everyone does, but, but this is the way we operate. I want to feel happy to have an open conversation for the 30 minutes that we might have a conversation to see if we're fit to do business together. See if you want us to do a strategy session or want us to design for you and take your idea. We want that evaluation timeframe and we want you to feel free to discuss it because we have had it happen. And this is built around having had a bad experience with someone who was so paranoid, refused to share their information, even though I signed a non disclosure with them, which I didn't want to, but we kind of went that far and it was just, you know, it already had a couple of conversations. So I finally signed it and he didn't really disclose everything, just started to disclose the category, the type of product Amazon sellers, you Amazon sellers out there are pretty paranoid. And that's one of the reasons we don't sell on Amazon and anything but 3D printing tools, so that it doesn't, you know, it doesn't trip on anyone else's stuff. But he was really paranoid. It was in the beauty tools category and really didn't disclose it. Disclosed enough for me to go, yeah, we can handle this project. And here's the right quote for it. But it wasn't until we. He signed the contract, paid for it and came in that I realized that he didn't have a good product. And I told him that and tried to say, hey, we don't want to do this project. We don't think, we don't think we can cost this out for you. Tried to refuse the project so many times and he kept coming back saying, no, I want you to do this. No, I want you to do this. Kept insisting to move forward, and sure enough, it took, you know, six months and a long time and we couldn't get a single factory to do it. And then he insisted on a refund. So we were like, you know what? Forget that. I'm not going to sign this stuff and I'm not going to do this until we're really sure that we're a fit already. And so that's why we have that sort of code of conduct, terms of service, and that's why we operate that way, so you can feel a little level of comfort in which you can disclose enough of your content to be able to be sure that we, hey, we understand the product. We do think we can help you. We are advising you properly because if you don't give us enough information, we can't advise you either. And we don't want that to happen. So it's kind of our policy on the site. It is our policy policy. It's not kind of, it's written and we want you to review it. And so we remind you of that when you make a booking appointment with us. But we also. It's also part of when you come and become a member. This is a point we want you to review and we push that out to you so that you do review it. We expect everyone to be confidential, but we also want you to be aware that the membership group is a public forum. So if you're typing things in you, disclosing things you shouldn't, it is on you. You must be aware that you are doing that and you have to think carefully about that. That's why you might want to have a One on one. That's why you might want to go offline and just meet specifically with the experts. Because this is a chance for you to ask those general questions. Not really a chance for you to get really specific about your product unless you can, like, you know, we were talking about before, you have a patent and you're happy to talk about it.

Something and you, you have no fear of, you know, not being able to get your patent eventually. Again, once you've filed it, you're as protected as you can be and you may as well disclose it. But again, I still think that in most cases there are way for you to ask questions that get at the heart of the issue or close enough to it without disclosing what is proprietary about your product. That can get you enough of an answer to move the ball down the field and then, or build enough of an excitement. Yeah. And to get to that point where, okay, yes, I have enough confidence in that answer. That's helped me with my problem, my question, and now it is worth it to me to go to the next level with one of the experts or with another third party you're working with. You know, we're here to help in any way that we can and we want to help move business forward for each and every one of you and help you achieve your goals and prevent you from falling into one of these major pitfalls that might, you know, set you back. So, you know, there probably is a good way to ask a question to get some help prior to needing to disclose something truly proprietary.

Yeah. So that's why we remind you of those every time you book an appointment with us. Just make sure that you are very aware of that and, and sort of, you know, thinking about that as you're going into the conversation. So the last question that I have, Tom, is really about factories. So. Yeah, so the question is, is how do we handle confidentiality and non disclosures with factories? And you know, and I would say, frankly, we don't. I mean, we do when we're manufacturing with someone, it's built into our contract, but we don't when we're trying to build samples and because it's too hard and then they won't build samples.

Yeah. The tough thing is if it is very hard, especially in another country, and maybe even hard enough in the U.S. if you're, you know, a U.S. based person, it's very hard to really make sure that a factory is going to keep something confidential. Ideally, you would be working with a supplier, a factory that values your business and is A company or has people of integrity that will keep it quiet because they value the relationship and the potential business with you more than their own self interest if they were to go and copy it or give it to somebody else. More often than not, that is the case. But it's very hard when you're sample making again. That's why by the time you get to quoting something, sending out drawings, specifications, CAD building samples, whatever they are, where you're going to get quotes and build samples, that you've already protected yourself as much as you're able to, and you put those factors on notice that, hey, this is patent pending.

Yeah, you have to put that on every drawing, every document you send copyrighted this.

If you know, logos or, you know, brand identity, whatever it might be, you know, if it's more private labeling something than making something new, then it's more in the copyright and trademark area. But that you want to put them on notice that this is pending or filed or issued, whatever your situation is, and then most often they will really respect that. In fact, in this day and age, it was different maybe 20 years ago, but now we even find a lot of Asian factories. You know, they'll even come back and say, hey, this thing you want us to quote, have you patented this? Do you have the rights to this? Is this really yours or are they copying something? They'll actually ask us that if they're a good supplier.

Yeah, we had that happen where we sent a client's actual product that had been made in Mexico.

A physical one.

Physical product. And we sent it over and we said, we want you to copy this exactly. They were like, are you sure you want us to copy this exactly? And we're like, no, no, no. Our client is theirs. This is theirs. Yeah, we do. We absolutely do. But we had to clarify that. And we were actually thought, that's a good sign of a good factory. Right. It gave a big check mark in there in their, you know, in their favor for us to want to work with them, because they think about that. And so one of the things that I want to say, and Tom's going to do a whole thing on prototyping that's coming up. And so what I just want to kind of put a. We have some different strategies that we use. It's one of the number one reasons why we use 3D printing, why we break up sometimes our samples at different factories. So we might do a part at one and a part at another. There are other reasons to keep confidential what you're working on. And ways to do that. And so Tom's going to talk more about that in that prototyping episode. But we really just want you to know that there are other ways around it and non disclosure strategies. Just frankly, I mean are you really going to be able to enforce that in Asia so it doesn't work or you know, in gosh, Canada or wherever it might be?

Who knows, from a practical business reality perspective, you may just. All we're saying is don't set yourself up for this and have this false sense of security that just because you've signed an NDA, oh, you're protected. Well, maybe you are, maybe you're not. And there are those who say maybe you're not.

Yeah. And there are those who say that same thing about the contract side of that and we'll talk about that in a whole nother episode. But in sometimes though being clear in communication about what you're expecting from them, including we are expecting you to hold this confidential because we have a patent on it. Making sure those kinds of statements are given and exchanged. Those are important and don't skip that.

Yeah. I think a lot of times in these sort of relationships where you're considering an NDA or you know, you're going to go to a factory and have them quote something or have them make a sample, I think that and maybe we take a deeper diver into this subject at some point. But I think just setting up proper expectations from the start goes a long way to you ending up getting the results that you're really looking for.

Yeah, we'll definitely do that as an upcoming episode. So those are much, much deeper dive. So we really appreciate your time today. Hope this was helpful for you. Appreciate the questions that came through on the people who sent in these questions, send them through ahead of time, which you can do in the membership group. So if you are a Product Launch Hazards member, you can send the questions in in advance so you' you don't have to be here live, but you can also join in live, participate in the conversation and ask us follow up questions, ask us to deeper dive. And so make sure that you're checking the membership group to be sure you know when the next topic that you're interested in is going to go live. And remember there's like there's 12 experts so you got lots of different topics and lots of different areas with their every week we will have an attorney actually cover this in their viewpoint as well. So there's always going to be a different viewpoint, there's always going to be some different things. And we want to you show, show you things from the expert sides, from the practical side, from being the customer, from being the consumer. Like we want to bring you all those viewpoints. So be sure to ask us questions as that's the way in which we can do that best.

Yeah, we want to serve you and however we can make that more relevant, you know, that's one of the best ways. Right.

And so if you're watching this video, don't forget there will be a blog post and a podcast that will follow up within a week. And so those will be posted as well. So if you want to, you know, listen to it next time you're on the train somewhere or you're, you know, at your kids soccer game and you're just, you know, really wanted to refresh your memory on something, it'll be there for you. And the blog posts are always there. We'll add links to anything that we talked about there as well. And of course that's@productlaunch hazards.com all right.

So to NDA or not to NDA, I say no.

I say in the right situation.

Yeah, I mean there are always exceptions personally, context.

Right.

I'm over. I'm over NDAs.

Well, thanks again everyone and we'll talk to you soon.

All right, goodbye for now from Product Launch Hazard.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Product Launch Hazards. To get the most out of your membership, visit productlaunchhazards.com to join the expert office hours live and ask us your burning questions. Check out the resource library for document templates and guides and get exclusive articles and shares each day. Don't forget, you can always book a private consult with any expert so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to product launch success.