A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is an agreement signed between two or more parties to prevent the disclosure of confidential information. It also can be called a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA) or secrecy agreement (SA).
Usually the main portion of an NDA will outline what information the parties expect to be kept secret. This can include all information exchanged between the parties or be merely limited to information that parties specifically mark as confidential. NDAs also often include sections specifying how long the confidentiality will last and what exceptions apply to its use.
NDAs are an important part of business relations between companies as they ensure that business secrets will be protected and provide a basis for trust between the parties. NDAs are also used between employees and companies to ensure that employees do not disclose company secrets to outside entities. In these cases the NDA will usually be one-sided, in that the employee is restricted from disclosing company information but the company is not.
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