Licensing is an important means of commercializing
Intellectual Property (IP) and enables rights owners to expand
cost-efficiently into new markets, territories and products.
However, it also carries the danger of losing control over valuable
business assets. Confidential Disclosure Agreements (CDAs) provide
a means of reducing that risk, so they need to be considered as an
option from the earliest negotiation stage.
Given their legal significance, questions often arise about how
IP licenses and CDAs are employed in practice. This makes it
all the more pivotal to understand the tensions that can arise
between licenses and CDAs and where pitfalls can develop.
Ties that bind
Licenses are agreements whereby one party (the licensor) grants
another (the licensee) permission to use certain IP rights in
return for a payment (often known as a royalty). Licenses typically
cover registered IP rights such as patents, trademarks or designs,
but they can also include
