Find an IP lawyer now. Get their advice. You will need one as soon as
you start anyway, since you'll hear from theirs.

You should disclose previous related work and include it in the NDA
before signing, so what is already yours is locked down. It can be a
grey area and like a lottery when it gets to litigation. In their favor:
waiting till you saw theirs to finish yours, waiting 10 yrs, not
disclosing yours, the NDA is probably very complete. In your favor: it
may not use any of their parts (grey area probably), you've well
documented your past work with witnesses, your completing it doesn't use
anything you just saw from them. You will be the one having to prove it
all though.

There is more detail, but that's a first pass. That's why you won't find
development type companies signing NDAs with people offering ideas
coming in the door. It could lock them out of a market they might
already be developing for, or at the least, cost them to do what they
had been planning in order to prove they didn't steal the ideas...

-Skip

Jinx wrote:
> I signed an NDA and did some work for a client. The client has
> backed out of the project, and I feel I'd like to have a go at
> marketing it myself. The client says I can't do that because I've
> signed an NDA. Normally I'd go along with that except -
>
> - the product is not novel and can be found in other markets, eg
> quite easily with Google. Hardly a secret. Anyone else who had
> not signed an NDA would therefore be quite at liberty to make
> these
>
> - I'd already independently invented and built one for myself 10
> years ago (but never went ahead and commercialised it), so I'm
> not ignorant of its existence. Neither are all the people who knew
> about mine before this client came along
>
> The NDA was the usual thing ; don't disclose to 3rd parties etc,
> nothing special
>
> What do you think ? Leg to stand on ?
>
>   

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