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Manufacturing contractor
Hi,
Is it enough that the manufacturing contractor provides an agreement, before sharing the formulation with them or shall we have our own version as well?Thanks
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2 Replies
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Depends on the agreement, your contract manufacturer’s integrity, their skill-set and how proprietary the formula. I know this doesn’t answer your question, but in 35 years working contract manufacturing, I’ve never seen a formula provided me under a CNDA that impressed me so much I felt the need to inform our management team: “Wow, this is so novel and unique, we’d better keep this one strictly under wraps or we’ll get sued by these people!” Usually it was “..yeesh, we could have provided this brand a MUCH better formula than this mediocre thing. We’ll keep that thought and their formula confidential all the same”
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One thing you need to make absolutely certain: That you own the IP to the formula under all circumstances. It is not uncommon for a CM to tell you that your formula needs to be modified (perhaps it does, perhaps it does not). And, if you do not specify it the contract will declare that the CM owns the formula IP and you have an exclusive license to use it with a buyout clause so you are locked in to that CM and don’t have a formula that you can have manufactured elsewhere if the relationship with the CM does not work out.
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