12+ Business Confidentiality Agreement Templates – PDF, DOC
When it comes to handling a simple business, it’s important that you take all of the necessary precautions that prevents important data from leaking towards the public. You might have a couple of trade secrets that you would like to keep from getting out and that can only happen if you know what you have to do in order to prevent them from happening.
Which is why you have to make sure that everyone who’s working for you knows that these secrets have to remain as such and that there are consequences should they decide to share them, whether they did so intentionally or not. That is why this article is going to teach you all about sample business confidentiality agreements and how you can go about in making them. You may also see agreement templates.
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What Is a Business Confidentiality Agreement?
The purpose of having this type of document is to ensure that those who are involved in it will not disclose any information that has been identified as confidential. Because let’s say that you’ve decided on the best person to hire out of all the list of candidates, but you’re worried that he or she might share your business’s complex process of developing the products that made it a success. By having that person sign a basic confidentiality agreement, you’re basically securing the information’s safety from being leaked.
Although that won’t always be the case as there’s a chance that the people involved can still break the sample agreement, there are still consequences that they will have to face should they decide to do so, assuming that you placed these stipulations in the agreement.
How to Make Your Business’s Confidentiality Agreement
Now that you have an idea as to what a simple confidentiality agreement is, the next step for you to take is to actually make them. Take note that the whole point of this is to make sure that none of your business secrets makes its way out to your competition or to anyone that isn’t involved with your business, meaning that you’ll have to put in the time and effort into making one that ensures your business’s secrets safe.
With that in mind, here are the steps that can help you create an effective confidentiality agreement:
1. Identify the People Involved in the Agreement
The first step when making the agreement is for you to know the people that are going to be involved in it and placing their names into the document. The reason as to why you would have to place their names is to ensure that they’re bound to whatever terms and conditions have been written in the agreement.
Make sure that you write down the complete names of the people involved, meaning their first name, last name, and even their middle name or initial. If the agreement is being made between two companies, then you’ll need to write down the name of both companies as well as the representatives that have to come to sign the agreement. You may also see legal confidential agreement templates.
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2. Know Whether the Agreement is Mutual or One Way
When it comes to making confidentiality agreements, you have to decide whether they’re one of two things: is it mutual or is it one way? You may also see data confidential agreement templates.
By mutual, you’re basically sharing information with another person or business and the other party will also have to give something up. For example, there’s a particular business who is more than willing to provide you with marketing services, but only if you hand over information regarding the products or services that you want to market. You may also see personal confidentiality agreements.
In terms of it being one way, a perfect example is when you’re hiring a new employee and you’re providing him or her with the information on how your business operates and the different processes and procedures that made it a success. Basically, you’re giving up information to an employee hoping that he or she doesn’t share the information with your competition.
3. Define What Information Should be Kept Secret
This is the point of the confidentiality agreement, where you have to point out specifically what kind of information should not be shared with those that are not involved in agreement. Take note that you will have to go into specific details as to what information you want to point out as confidential. Be sure that whatever information you’ve written down is related to your business, as well as it being damaging to your small business should it be leaded to your competition.
A good example would be the materials that you’ve used on a specific product for your business. You can even go deeper by stating that the people involved in the agreement must also not share other things such as the prototypes, the length of time it takes to make these products or any details regarding its creation process. It doesn’t matter how many pieces of information you want to keep secret from the public, the only thing you have to do to ensure they’re safety is if you place them into the document where the people involved in the agreement can read them.
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4. Establish What Can Be Done
Let’s say that you’ve decided that the people involved in the agreement are ones you can trust with your business’s important data. You will still need to come up with the terms on how they can use this information as you don’t want them using it in ways where your competition would still be able to gain access to it. You have to think of this section of the document as a clear set of instructions that will tell the people involved on how they can use the information and what it is that they shouldn’t do with it. You may also see HR confidentiality agreements.
A perfect example of this is when you’ve just hired a new employee in your company and you want to guarantee that he or she doesn’t disclose your trade secrets. The best thing to do to help you out with that is if you limit how the employee can use the information by only letting him or her utilize it for job-related duties and responsibilities.
Just make sure that you’re able to think of all the necessary precautions such as how employees share the information via email, who they share it with, and what they can do with it. The more prepared you are, the better secured your company’s important and confidential information is. You may also see real estate confidentiality agreements.
5. Specify When the Agreement Begins and Ends
You have to specify when the terms and conditions of the agreement are going to begin and when the agreement itself is no longer applicable to those involved. While just about every confidential agreement typically lasts around five years, there are some countries wherein they’re only required to last for around two or three. You’re going to have to do your research so you can specify how long your confidentiality agreement lasts so you can ensure that it upholds the law. You may also see non-disclosure agreement templates.
You’ll need to be very specific as to when the agreement is going to start. Place in the month, day, and year into the agreement. The reason as to why you would want to do this is because you have to make sure that those involved know exactly when they should no longer share whatever confidential information they’ve already learned about your company. You may also see medical confidentiality agreements.
Then you’ll need to specify when the agreement is going to end. You don’t have to place in a specific date for this as you’ll never know when you might want to end it. This means you can go with the year in which you would like to end and state that it can happen from any time within that year. Also, you can add that the agreement may end should a particular event occur. A good example of which is if you need to change the process of a product’s development, meaning that you’ll have to come up with another confidentiality agreement if you decide to share that with the same person.
6. Set Legal Consequences and Ramifications for Those Who Break the Agreement
This is the part where you’ll need to be very careful with. Take note that you will have to go into detail when you need to explain what kind of consequences there are should one decide to break the agreement. The severity of the consequences will depend entirely on the uniqueness of the information and how damaging it is should it manage to be leaked to those that aren’t involved in the agreement.The more difficult something is to value, the more likely there is to be a clause listing a specific dollar amount in damages for breach. If both parties can come to an agreement of the value of the information, then they won’t need a judge to help them resolve the issue. You may also see sample vendor confidentiality agreements.
If you would like to learn more in regards to how you should make a confidentiality agreement for your business, then all you have to do is go through our site. It has all the information that you need that should be able to help you out. The only thing that you have to do is go through them thoroughly so that you can make use of whatever it is that they can provide.