[IGDA_indies] Confidential Information

[Tom Park]

Hi,

Say you're a developer and you'll be porting code
from multiple publishers. They're all paranoid that
you're going to steal concepts from their code and
use it elsewhere.

The NDA and development contracts have stuff about
Confidential Information, and you have to alter those
documents to say that you won't violate copyrights
but you've got to be able to keep and use what's in
your head. You can't purge your brain after a project,
and you should be able to use the residuals.

How do you justify it when you're telling them you
have to amend those documents? I'm not looking for
legal advice -- just wondering what you tell them.

They seem to want to own everything and say ALL of it
is confidential. It's ridiculous. Much of anyone's
so-called proprietary technology is nothing special,
so i'd rather not see it anyway but it's unavoidable.
If the technology was so special, then they should
patent it and then if you stole their idea they could
get you for patent violation instead of writing stupid
confidentiality clauses in contracts.

Tom