Barbara,
Mitch’s advice is solid. (I’ll add my standard disclaimer here: Anyone who takes legal advice from a graphic designer is an idiot.)
Over the years, I have signed a few non-disclosure agreements. They were unneeded for a couple of reasons. The first is that I don't talk about clients' or prospective clients' business with or without an NDA. It is unethical, unprofessional, and just plain stupid. The unfortunate factor in your case is that participants are not going to have that same sort of professional connection.
The other reason that NDAs generally seem superfluous is that I have never been shown anything subsequent to signing an NDA that I couldn’t have guessed beforehand. People tend to think that their thoughts are unique and surprising; that is generally not the case. (Mitch’s point incorporates a more nuanced version of this.)
Talking to an IP attorney is great if you can afford it but I wasn’t clear in my previous post. I meant to emphasize the negative part: Lawyers who do not specialize in IP know less about it than I do and, in case I haven’t said it, anyone who takes legal advice from a graphic designer is an idiot.
The big danger in this sort of project is that university administrators want to have everything done by university attorneys. There must be something that university attorneys are particularly good at but I haven’t run into it yet.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006
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