Confidentiality Agreements are Contracts with Long Teeth

The recent cases in the article highlight that the possible consequences of an agreement to maintain the confidentiality of information can be far reaching and are evolving. These cases also teach that, in addition to the importance of having contractual provisions sufficient to accomplish the intended objectives, director awareness of the effects of provisions in NDAs their companies enter into can have fiduciary duty implications. Thus, the lessons of these recent cases should be considered by counsel and discussed with the client before an NDA is entered into for a significant transaction.