As an attorney who works on such confidentiality agreements, I'd suggest that if your institution doesn't have a policy of requiring such agreements, they ought to consider them. Although much of the same information would be protected under an employee's duty of loyalty (yes, even to a former employer), such agreements serve to reinforce the idea that confidential information stays confidential even after an employee leaves. I suspect that most museums would not be pleased if the "internal" information Amalyah mentions was disseminated to other museums or organizations without their permission.
In the United States, laws on confidential information vary greatly by state. In Virginia, for example, the state supreme court ruled at one point that although employees could not take customer lists with them when they left a company, they were free, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, to reconstruct as much of the customer list as they could from their own memories and to solicit those customers on behalf of their new employer. In most industries and professions, for employees that work with sensitive information, we generally recommend confidentiality agreements, and sometimes (depending on the nature of the work done) we recommend noncompete or nonsolicitation agreements as well. We also recommend that those same agreements indicate that the employer doesn't WANT information that a former employer considered confidential, and that the employee shouldn't disclose such information to them. Kevin Grierson Kevin W. Grierson Willcox & Savage, P.C. 1800 Bank of America Center One Commercial Place Norfolk, Virginia 23510 mailto:[email protected] ph: 757/628-5603 fx: 757/628-5566 http://www.wilsav.com >>> [email protected] 03/14/02 08:02AM >>> Do any of you work in institutions that require you to sign a "secrecy" agreement? To the effect that you will not give other institutions "internal" information (research notes, donor lists, unpublished new acquisitions)? Or do you have any policies on that? amalyah keshet head of image resources & copyright management the israel museum, jerusalem [email protected] tel +972-2-670-8874 fax +972-2-670-8064 www.imj.org.il --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected]
