Before you charge in - part 7. Confidentiality agreements - are they worth the paper they are written on?

Obligations of confidence arise because of the relationships between parties (e.g. between MI5 and a field operative), or because of the circumstances of disclosure (e.g. an inventor revealing the secret designs of a new product to an investor or two parties collaborating in a joint venture). Sometimes the obligation of confidence is imposed by contract.

To be protected by the law of confidential information, the information must be confidential in nature, disclosed in circumstances carrying an obligation of confidence and the parties must continue to treat that information as confidential.

In this the seventh part of our 'before you charge in' series, we provide an overview of the law of confidential information, the key terms and remedies.