Your questions answered
What is a confidentiality agreement?
Confidentiality Disclosure Agreements (CDAs), also known as Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), are legally binding documents that enable you to record the terms under which you exchange secret information. You are strongly advised to consider using one if you are going to disclose the details of your invention to another party.
There is no 'one-fits-all' CDA, they come in all shapes and sizes, from short and simple to the long and legalistic. Although you will find examples of CDAs in books and on the internet, it is highly recommended that you consult a patent attorney about how to protect your ideas and the risks of communicating these ideas to someone else.
How can I protect a song that I have written?
Copyright applies to music when it is recorded, either by writing it down or in any other manner. With a song there will usually be more than one copyright associated with it. If you are the composer of the music you will be the author of the musical work and will have copyright in that music. The lyrics of a song are protected separately by copyright as a literary work. The person who writes the lyrics will own the copyright in the words.
If your work is subsequently recorded the sound recording will also have copyright protection. The producer of the recording will own the copyright in the sound recording.
Copyright is like any form of physical property in that you can buy it, sell it, inherit or otherwise transfer it, wholly or in part.
Copyright exists in your original music composition or score for your life plus 70 years from the end of the year of your death. The same length of time applies for the lyrics, whereas the sound recording only lasts for 50 years from the end of the year in which it was made or, if published in this time, 50 years from the end of the year of publication. If not published during that 50 year period, but it is played in public or communicated to the public during that period, then copyright will last for 50 years from when this happens.