Q: What are the types of non disclosure agreement ?

Ans:  There are three types of non- disclosure agreement: 

Types of NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement): 

1. Unilateral NDA: A unilateral NDA (sometimes referred to as a one-way NDA) that includes two parties where only one party (i.e., the disclosing party) anticipates disclosing certain information to the other party (i.e., the receiving party) and would require that the information must be protected from further disclosure for some reason with a view to maintain the secrecy and confidentiality. 

When two parties enter into a contract and only one party agrees to share confidential Information to another party and  also prevent others from further disclosing that Information to any other party.

Under this kind of non disclosure agreement, there is only one party out of the two parties to the agreement whose information is required to be protected. The kinds of agreements which fall under this category are employer and employee , client and vendor, inventor- evaluator,  etc. Almost every employment agreement these days has a clause of the confidentiality , rather than having a separate agreement.

2. Bilateral NDA: Under this type of agreement, both the entering parties agree to disclose information to each other and they prevent each other in further disclosing it to any other party not involved in the contract by either of the parties.

Under this kind of agreement, both the parties to the agreement disclose the information to each other and both the parties are required not to disclose the information to other persons outside the contract.

This type of NDA is common in the businesses considering some kind of joint venture or merger. 

These include corporate takeovers, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions.

 For instance:   In the case of a joint venture, if a chip manufacturer knows about the top-secret of the design of new phone, they may be required to keep the design a secret. In the same agreement, the phone manufacturer may be required to the keep secret about the design of chip as well. Bilateral or two-way confidentiality agreements are less likely to contain such provisions which can come out to be one-sided. 

3. Multilateral NDA: When three or more parties enter into the agreement and only one of them discloses the confidential information to both of the other parties and expects that the information is not further disclosed to any other party outside the contract. This type of NDA eliminates the need for separate unilateral or bilateral NDAs between only two parties. E.g., a single multiparty NDA entered into by three parties in which each party intend to disclose information to the other two parties could be used in place of three separate bilateral NDAs between the first and second parties, second and third parties, and third and first parties.