Client Testimonials
"The Waterfront Partnership delivers an in-depth understanding of the issues facing companies in the software products and services market with sound commercial and legal expertise. They do this at affordable rates to agreed deadlines, something which city law firms seem unable to do"
Peter Madigan, Managing Director, Web Services Integration Ltd
Confidentiality
Keeping information confidential helps to prevent your competitors from becoming aware of your new ideas and getting to the market place ahead of you.
Certain intellectual property rights are destroyed if confidentiality is not preserved. For example, if your business is research intensive, and you freely exhibit a new idea or way of doing something at a trade show, you will probably no longer be able to apply for patents in respect of that new idea. So keeping information confidential, at least until a new idea has been commercially and legally evaluated for patentability is essential.
Accordingly, you should always educate your employees to keep everything confidential and you should never retain independent consultants without first asking them to sign a written consultancy agreement, which includes confidentiality provisions.
In the event that you become aware of a breach of confidential information, you should seek legal advice as soon as possible. The most important thing is to stop the confidential information being passed on to third parties. If recipients are unwilling to enter into similar confidentiality undertakings, the only way to do this may be to make an urgent application to the Court.