nvidia Nvidia's new NDA requirement for early hardware states "The recipient uses confidential information exclusively for the benefit of Nvidia"

[RobFRaschke]

I am not a lawyer, but I did stay at a holiday inn express once.

 

"For the benefit of" is extremely common legal hargon that only really means that you can't use the proprietary information with malice to negatively impact the owner of that information financially, or potentially financially. 

 

An example of this for Nvidia would be, if they sent out an extremely early sample to a tech reviewer, or subcontractor, who then forwarded that sample, or other proprietary information, to a competitor.

 

Keep in mind, this NDA is likely not just used for media outlets, but PR firms and possibly even subcontractors prior to becoming a subcontractor during negotiations. If you think the legal department of a major company wouldn't copy and paste successful language from one document to another, you're crazy.

 

This document does not preclude a reviewer from having negative opinions on a product and sharing them. Or even refusing to recommend a product in their review. The publicity of the review itself is for the benefit of Nvidia, even if it's negative. Sending out review samples to increase exposure of a product is going to be responsible for a huge share of enthusiast sales, and setting the market tone for an entire generation of hardware, which can even effect OEM sales, where they make their real money.

 

This is practically a tabloid story of "the big bad company is mean" and virtue signaling.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Lost in translation sums it up pretty well i guess.

That and "we don't like green, so we try to find something that we may be able to spin in a negative direction for them".

 

And honestly, i am saddened that it actually worked.

Reading the comments below the original (german) article is borderline depressing. The people just took what they said for granted and instantly flamed away, played the usual "that is why i only buy amd" nonsense ect.

 

Heisse claims that NVidia is trying to control the press, when in reality the press (Heisse.de) tries to use their influence to attack a company that did nothing wrong (at least with this NDA, not gonna go into any other topics).

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, EsaT said:

Yes, they exist so that reviews etc are published only when product is ready for release (or at least considered ready enough by maker) and so that all reviewers get fair chance to publish their review at same time.

And they're usually product specific, instead of having some arbitrary five year time regardless when reviews can be published.

 

When has Nvidia had to suffer any consequencies?

I mean whole bumbgate thing of making whole serie of products with flawed design?

Showing faked Fermi half year before any actual product?

Some companies would get publicly lynched from such!

Or insane amount of tesselation on completely useless places in heavily Nvidia backed DX11 patch of Crysis 2 "accidentally" slowing AMD cards lot more to add into pile...

Not too sure what you are trying to say or prove here.

[MasterJV]

ALright boy and girls. Jesu.... i mean gamersnexus has done what a reasonable person should do and has ACTUALLY DONE THEIR RESEARCH and not just spout nvidia hate out of their mouths. behold:

 

[mr moose]

 

12 minutes ago, MasterJV said:

ALright boy and girls. Jesu.... i mean gamersnexus has done what a reasonable person should do and has ACTUALLY DONE THEIR RESEARCH and not just spout nvidia hate out of their mouths. behold:

 

It's like I might have a basic understanding:

 

22 hours ago, mr moose said:

That's for confidential information supplied by Nvidia.  Flaws discovered in a product, testing results and overall performance figures are not confidential information supplied by nvidia. These can all be made public when the NDA for said product is lifted.

 

This is all set out in the 3rd paragraph.

 

[MasterJV]

17 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

It's like I might have a basic understanding:

 

Yes Mr.Moose. You're not the only one blessed with knowledge. 

Others however, are not. Having a third party source clearly describing what the NDA is and isn't should help ease the aneuyrism others are having over this matter. 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, MasterJV said:

Yes Mr.Moose. You're not the only one blessed with knowledge. 

Others however, are not. Having a third party source clearly describing what the NDA is and isn't should help ease the aunerism others are having over this matter. 

I know, I just get frustrated with people getting so paranoid they lose all rationality. Especially when they believe such things without question and then argue  it without being critical of their evidence.

 

 

[79wjd]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I know, I just get frustrated with people getting so paranoid they lose all rationality. Especially when they believe such things without question and then argue  it without being critical of their evidence.

 

 

To lose ones' rationality, one has to have some rationality in the first place. 

[Misanthrope]

Not sure who has less confidence with the audience right now: Nvidia or Youtubers.

 

This NDA stuff seems like a bunch of nonsense. The fact that people are looking for excuses to bring out the forks and torches on reddit is the interesting story here.

 

But then again...not that interesting: It's easy to see how portraying youtubers as for-sale advertisers for products is easy: they're in the business of Marketing first and foremost. Cultivating an audience just gives them more leverage but I am suspecting, also more migraines right now.

[cesrai]

Quote

 Das NDA sollte für alle Informationen von Nvidia gelten, bezog sich also nicht auf ein konkretes Produkt oder eine konkrete Information. Ein konkretes Ablaufdatum gab es auch nicht. Zudem war es voll von Bedingungen, die journalistischen Grundsätzen zuwider laufen.

 

 

My problem is that the NDA applies to everything from Nvidia and not to a specific information or a product. The NDA also doesn't have any expire-date and it contains a lot of terms that contradict journalistic principles. I have no idea what these principles are, it would've been nice if heise mentioned them. Maybe I'll write them an Email and ask what these principles are.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, cesrai said:

 

 

My problem is that the NDA applies to everything from Nvidia and not to a specific information or a product. The NDA also doesn't have any expire-date and it contains a lot of terms that contradict journalistic principles. I have no idea what these principles are, it would've been nice if heise mentioned them. Maybe I'll write them an Email and ask what these principles are.

Watch the video.  it has a 5 year expiry, it's a genreic par for the course NDA, it does not contradict any journalistic principals (if such things even exist).   

[Okjoek]

Just one bad press anti-competition story after another.

 

[PlayStation 2]

Let's see all the faux lawyers come out and attempt to explain whatever.

I don't understand legal shit, so that's why I've stood out of this. Some people are less fortunate than me and can't think about whether or not they know what they're speaking of.

[Arika]

but...but...NVidia is supposed to be evil 

 

 

[Suika]

So the internet now thinks less of NVIDIA (likely only for a few more days) because of intimidating legal jargon a German news outlet and the most qualified people in the world to be viewing legal documents /s (redditors) hyped up for nothing.

 

Neat.

[Arika]

3 minutes ago, Suika said:

So the internet now thinks less of NVIDIA (likely only for a few more days) because of intimidating legal jargon a German news outlet and the most qualified people in the world to be viewing legal documents /s (redditors) hyped up for nothing.

 

Neat.

smear campaign by AMD anyone?

[Suika]

1 minute ago, Sierra Fox said:

smear campaign by AMD anyone?

Watch that be the next accusation on Reddit lul.

[LAwLz]

31 minutes ago, Suika said:

So the internet now thinks less of NVIDIA (likely only for a few more days) because of intimidating legal jargon a German news outlet and the most qualified people in the world to be viewing legal documents /s (redditors) hyped up for nothing.

 

Neat.

No, the reason why this happened is because people already thought less of Nvidia (because for some reason everyone seem to love AMD).

People seem to deliberately look for and view things Nvidia does in a negative light. I am not sure if people does it consciously, but it is very clear to me that people assume Nvidia has bad intentions by default, and assume AMD has good intentions by default.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, so the summary of the NDA is that it's just standard stuff and does in no way limit reviewers to only writing positive things.

This is the reason why I didn't comment in the original thread. Because I am not a lawyer and interpreting legal documents is something most people can't do.

[asus killer]

if i understood correctly it's all normal business. Then why do a NDA? maybe that's what created the problem for Nvidia.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, asus killer said:

if i understood correctly it's all normal business. Then why do a NDA? maybe that's what created the problem for Nvidia.

The NDA is the normal business, companies aren't going to pre-brief reviewers and tech outlets before product launches without protections in place. Good faith only goes so far, legal documents go further.

[Athan Immortal]

9 hours ago, MasterJV said:

ALright boy and girls. Jesu.... i mean gamersnexus has done what a reasonable person should do and has ACTUALLY DONE THEIR RESEARCH and not just spout nvidia hate out of their mouths. behold:

 

I'm so glad they did this, and so quickly after the initial break. The wording as the lawyer says is a bit open to interpretation, but ultimately a kind of normal looking NDA.

[Lathlaer]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

No, the reason why this happened is because people already thought less of Nvidia (because for some reason everyone seem to love AMD).

It's because AMD is the little guy in the CPU sector and microguy in the GPU sector. Thus every news that paints Intel or NVIDIA - the giants in their respective fields - in negative light will get so much traction.

 

And people just love their David vs. Goliath stories ;-)

 

Which will only make Intel vs. NVIDIA in the GPU sector so much interesting in the future.

[asus killer]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The NDA is the normal business, companies aren't going to pre-brief reviewers and tech outlets before product launches without protections in place. Good faith only goes so far, legal documents go further.

steve on the video mentioned reviewers usually just get an email and agree or not, respect or not respect and then accept the consequences. He doesn't say NDA's are normal for this. I may have got the wrong idea but that's what i got from the video.

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, asus killer said:

steve on the video mentioned reviewers usually just get an email and agree or not, respect or not respect and then accept the consequences. He doesn't say NDA's are normal for this. I may have got the wrong idea but that's what i got from the video.

He also said for smaller companies that is the common way to do it, or for products like cases that aren't that sensitive. For GPUs and CPUs NDAs are common, you can even go back and watch the lead up to Ryzen and TR where Linus said he could not even comment on news stories or rumors about it as he is already under NDA.

 

You may also have signed a broad NDA like this but also still get the email as part of product release or review sample.

 

Anything involving big money and over millions of unit sales will have an NDA.

[porina]

32 minutes ago, asus killer said:

steve on the video mentioned reviewers usually just get an email and agree or not, respect or not respect and then accept the consequences. He doesn't say NDA's are normal for this. I may have got the wrong idea but that's what i got from the video.

Elsewhere in the video they said companies wont do a specific NDA for every little thing. Save on that expensive lawyer time. There's a risk/cost tradeoff for nvidia to consider. If an embargo is sufficient, effectively someone's word, they can use that path. If there is something bigger, they may break out a generic NDA. For something really big, they might do a specific NDA.