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Nondisclosure Agreements

As some of the research work carried our at Argonne National Laboratory is not yet published or is in the process of being protected through patents and copyrights, often a nondisclosure Agreement (NDA) is put in place when researchers or OTT staff want to discuss future commercialization possibilities for a particular technology with interested parties. These individuals may be from the private or public sector. A Non-disclosure agreement enables disclosure of information without creating a patenting bar and also puts the parties on notice that they should not freely distribute the information.

Argonne uses three main types of NDA:

One-way into Argonne

Used when a company wishes to discuss its propriety information with Argonne researches.

One-way out of Argonne Used when Argonne researchers wish to discuss their unpublished results with industry.
Two-way Used when both parties want to discuss propriety/unpublished information

Non disclosure agreements are usually requested by the Argonne researcher who is interested in working with a company or directly from OTT due to requests for information on a technology developed at Argonne. The Argonne Legal Department is responsible for generating and executing the NDA.

To see what information is requested for inclusion in a typical NDA click here


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