Another document that’s often requested that we draft for companies is a non-disclosure agreement, assignment of inventions, agreement and a non-compete. Let’s start with a non-disclosure agreement and the assignment of inventions agreement.

So you’re going to employ somebody or multiple people and you’re going to have them do a bunch of things for you that you’re going to pay them to do. And you want to make sure that on the assignment invention side, whatever they do while they’re working for you becomes the company’s property, that it’s not theirs. Whether it’s a patent, trademark, copyright doesn’t matter.

You’re paying them in exchange for their services and the company owns the product or service or whatever the intellectual property is. A non-disclosure agreement is also saying you’re going to learn a bunch of things. You’re going to see a bunch of things while you’re here, whether it’s proprietary to the company, confidential to the company, or when you’re serving a law firm or a medical doctor’s office, other confidential information of clients, patients, etc. And you want to make sure that your employees understand that those items are confidential and that they’re agreeing to the confidentiality in a document upfront.

A non compete agreement is sometimes also requested, depending on a particular industry, and it’s very important to pay particular attention to what are you asking your potential employee to not compete with you against or not solicit? Meaning they’re not going to take clients or take other employees if they leave. And that should be narrowly tailored, properly drafted, consistent with appropriate state law.