Orly Lobel, Harvard Business Review; NDAs Are Out of Control. Here’s What Needs to Change
[Kip Currier: Came across this article about Nondisclosure Agreements (NDAs) while updating a Trade Secrets lecture for this week. The author raises a number of thought-provoking ethical and policy issues to consider. Good information for people in all sectors to think about when faced with signing an NDA and/or managing NDAs.]
"Nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, which are increasingly common in
employment contracts, suppress employee speech and chill creativity. The
current revelations surfacing years of harassment in major
organizations are merely the tip of the iceberg.
New data shows
that over one-third of the U.S. workforce is bound by an NDA. These
contracts have grown not only in number but also in breadth. They not
only appear in settlements after a victim of sexual harassment has
raised her voice but also are now routinely included in standard
employment contracts upon hiring. At the outset, NDAs attempt to impose
several obligations upon a new employee. They demand silence, often
broadly worded to protect against speaking up against corporate culture
or saying anything that would portray the company and its executives in a
negative light. NDAs also attempt to expand the definitions of secrecy
to cover more information than the traditional bounds of trade secret
law, in effect preventing an employee from leaving their employer and
continuing to work in the same field."
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