"Confidentiality is Overrated!"

OK.  This one's a bit controversial, and I don't necessarily subscribe to it. But.... someone whom I respect greatly as a high tech executive made that statement in a coffee conversation last week, and I thought I'd be interesting to share his point of view.

His point was simply that engineering mentality in any high tech industry has such a strong sense of NIH (Not Invented Here) that even if you present them your IP (patent), they won't use the IP since they believe can do it better themselves and that the IP is "of no real value".

I know from personal experience (having worked in an IP company once) that an engineer's first reaction to an IP is that "it's no good" and her IP is just much more relevant.  In fact in one case, I remember the engineering team I was dealing with didn't want to sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) since they didn't want to even see the IP to avoid contamination as they were sure they were going to invent something "better".

As it turns out, the value of IP, just like anything else, is in the eye of the beholder.  So if the engineer might think the IP is irrelevant, his management might think otherwise and see it as extremely relevant since it could provide them a economic advantage or at least a leveled playing field.

Confidentiality might be overrated (in a hyper-practical view) but also in the same hyper-practical view, it never hurts to have one (e.g. NDA) in place to remove all possible future issues.