NDA questions

Keep in mind depending on who you plan on trying to pitch this to, many companies purposely will not accept externally solicited ideas. The main reason being, if you show up with an NDA, show them Widget A - which turns out to be substantially similar to something they are already working on, they’ve just put themselves in a bind.

If it is a quick turn lifecycle product, more than likely your patents wouldn’t be granted in the time it takes you to get the product to market, making it really less effective.

You can google both mutual and one way NDA’s, but most lawyers probably won’t charge you much. You can also grab an NDA template, read through it yourself crossing off anything that doesn’t seem to apply then ask a lawyer to review it. That likely won’t cost more than $150-300 for an hour of their time and feedback.

I say it’s worth going to the lawyer because I have been in a situation where I have had to lawyer up after being threatened to be sued, and the template I had been using was from another state which included statutes that didn’t apply where we were doing business. We wound up settling, but there would have been a chance they’d throw out the agreement if we had to go to court because sections didn’t apply.