Intellectual rights

[Justloadit]

Part of an NDA says that any part of the discussion which can be shown as being available in the public domain is excluded.
There is also a time constraint in the NDA, and you can also insert a clause which says that if there is no business with the idea over a period of time, the NDA becomes invalid.

There are many ways of doing NDA's which caters for all the concerns that have been raised here.
If there were no NDAs many products would not have made it to market.

[Blurock]

An NDA has almost become standard practice when dealing with larger manufacturers or suppliers. The NDA protects BOTH parties and can be drafted in many different ways to address issues raised.

One does have to keep an open mind though as we can get silly and include things such as what if the sky falls on us...

I have dealt with a number of entities from software to injection moulding and contract manufacturing. In all cases the companies were very professional in their approach and some already had a standard NDA. They were also open to accepting a custom NDA from the proposer or the guy with the idea. The objective is not to0 be restrictive, but to protect the rights of both parties and then to find common ground to proceed with production.