A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a broad non-disclosure agreement that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign required employees to sign is unenforceable.
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Gardephe’s ruling generally steered clear of the constitutional issues presented by such agreements in the context of political campaigns. Instead, the judge — an appointee of President George W. Bush — said the sweeping, boilerplate language the campaign compelled employees to sign was so vague that the agreement was invalid under New York contract law.
Within the last six months, three major changes have drastically reduced the enforceability of predatory NDAs.
These changes provide general protection to all impacted employees, and specific protections for victims of sexual harassment. With this, it seems the power and popularity of predatory NDAs is finally waning. And workers are gaining back ground they never should’ve lost.
my professor: *has the canvas page up*
me: sick!!! i wonder what books i need
canvas: the syllabus is locked until January 10th at *time the class starts*
me:
me: i guess this class is top secret then, huh?
An absurd amount of of legal fees go into templates we curate and pass out to clients like Halloween candy.
Want to hire a birth photographer? Need an NDA for that. Renovating your kitchen? Pass these out to your contractors. Hooking up with the hotel bartender? Could she sign here first?
The funny, and often unsaid part is that few NDAs are fully enforceable. They are most effective at preventing recordings from taking place, information being sold for profit, and trade secrets from being revealed. (Even that varies state to state.) Publicists continue to rely on them for a few reasons: 1) laymen hate legalese and either can’t or don’t take the time to understand what they’re signing 2) people fear lawsuits regardless of their merit 3) it’s one of the only tools publicists have to insure their clients against mess before it happens.
What happens if a client declines to use or can’t get a signature on an NDA?
We work in an advisory capacity and clients are allowed to accept risks we advise against.
Are NDAs void when a law is broken?
We are not lawyers, but in our experience clients are advised illegal activity is never fully protected under confidentiality agreements. If this is a question you have beyond idle curiosity, contact a lawyer.
What happens if an NDA is violated?
Expect a strongly worded letter for sure. 😏 Cease and desists can be dressed up or down depending on the severity of the violation.
If the violation causes damages and warrants legal action, it’s usually settled privately with compensation and a new confidentiality agreement.
How long are NDAs valid?
Sometimes just a few days, and sometimes they have no expiration date. A term of 1-5 years is common for the kinds of agreements we work with in PR.
Additional questions can be submitted to our ask box!
"they revealed how the Prince later demanded that the girl sign a non-disclosure agreement in a bid to prevent her speaking out about their encounter."
ive been getting back into vtubers after like a year and a half of not keeping up with them and redditor hololive fans continue to be the most annoying people on this planet
Yesterday's news felt like an anticlimax to me. Indicted for paying off Stormy Daniels was not what I had been hoping for. The man has been calling for violence since he tried to overthrow the election and this is what we get?
The wheels of the Grand Jury continue to turn. I remain in wait and see mode.
I had two related questions today on keeping things quiet in the industry, so I thought I would answer them together.
Devolver Digital left a comment under the "Return to Monkey Island" trailer saying, "You'll have no idea how hard it was to keep this secret for two years." It made me wonder, what are the precautions to keep secrets in the gaming industry, particularly when dealing with license games where people outside of the game developer/publisher are ncessarily (sic) involved with production?
Is it really necessary for studios to have "code names" for projects? What is the point?
It’s important to note that the reason for secrecy is primarily for marketing purposes. We want to keep a big project quiet until we’re ready to show it and get players excited for it. If our product is tied in with another product or IP with a big planned push at some point in the future, tipping our hand too early can lead to a cascading set of reveals we or our business partners were unready to make. For example, revealing a new mainline Pokemon game too early would spill the beans on an entire new pokemon generation, which would affect merchandise, animated series, and so on. As a result, we usually put in safeguards to prevent such leaks from happening, both punitive and practical.
The first major safeguard is just the boilerplate Non-Disclosure Agreement. We all know that revealing things too early costs money and time - it hurts the effectiveness of the company’s marketing campaigns, so all employees must sign NDAs where they promise to protect the company’s trade secrets under penalty of being held liable for any damage their loose lips may cause. I can talk about the design principles in abstract, but I can’t talk about the specifics of the game I’m working on. Everybody who goes into the office has to sign an NDA, even visitors and family members.
There are other practices put into place to protect against this beyond the NDA catch-all. Project code names are pretty standard operating procedure just so developers don’t accidentally spill the beans in public settings or to coworkers who aren’t yet read in, like when discussing work topics over lunch in a public space. At one point, before the announcement of the PS4 and XBone, my studio had to use code names for those console versions of the games in order to keep even internal developers not on those teams in the dark about what was going on. This was not because our publisher/employer did not trust us, but because Sony and Microsoft were legally covering themselves and requiring this compliance from my employer.
Beyond this, it’s also possible that the project itself can change over time. Just because the final result is a Monkey Island game doesn’t mean the project initially started out that way. It might have been another game idea entirely that had the Monkey Island IP brought on later in the development process. The project still needs a name, even if all of the details aren’t yet set in stone. That’s where code names come in.
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Within the last six months, three major changes have drastically reduced the enforceability of predatory NDAs.
These changes provide general protection to all impacted employees, and specific protections for victims of sexual harassment. With this, it seems the power and popularity of predatory NDAs is finally waning. And workers are gaining back ground they never should’ve lost.
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