Devoted to Corporate Attorneys, Corporate Lawyers, and Corporate Counsel

The following is not meant to be legal advice.

All over the news these days is a rumor that Microsoft Corp. may buy Yahoo!.  How true is this rumor?  Seems that a year ago, Microsoft was already talking to Yahoo!.

If it could be true, then companies doing business should review their non-disclosure agreements to make sure that they do not disclose information to Yahoo! that could potentially be disclosed to Microsoft if Microsoft is a competitor.

In some nondisclosure agreements, there is the residual rights clause.  This clause allows people to reuse what they retain in memory if they are not sure that what they have in their memory came from confidential information.  If a confidentiality agreement has a residual rights clause, it could work against a company who discloses more confidential information than what it receives.  Residual rights provisions may be alright if a company does more listening than disclosing.