You leave Canton Fair with two promising contacts for a custom dispensing cap. Both ask for the complete CAD assembly before quoting. The assembly includes a mechanism your team developed, and the folder also contains customer-specific versions. You want useful quotations without sending the entire project to businesses you have not yet selected. Decide what each recipient needs for the next step before attaching files.
The product, messages and file identifiers below are fictional illustrations, not customer transactions or legal templates. This article is general information, not legal, engineering, tax or investment advice. Have qualified counsel assess confidentiality, permitted-use terms and enforceability for the parties and jurisdictions involved.
Separate the quotation brief from the complete project
Prepare a public-facing introduction using information you are willing to distribute: intended application, broad product category and non-sensitive commercial requirements. Your engineer can then prepare a more detailed quotation brief for the shortlist. Remove unrelated assemblies, customer names and internal costing notes. Check the attachments themselves, including hidden layers and metadata, rather than trusting the filename.
Give both candidates enough of the same baseline to price the same task. For the cap, that might include the outer envelope, required material characteristics and the function the buyer needs. Your engineer decides which details can remain withheld without making the estimate misleading. Mark omissions and ask the supplier to state assumptions and exclusions.
A supplier may need a sensitive interface to assess manufacturability. Ask which feature it needs and why. You can consider a limited drawing extract or a separate paid feasibility stage. If a useful firm quote requires disclosure you are not ready to authorise, accept an indicative estimate or defer that supplier's quotation. Do not pretend a vague brief establishes a production price.
Establish who would receive the files
The salesperson may work for a trading business while another company performs engineering. Use the supplier-registration guide to identify the contracting business, then ask which legal entities and roles would access your information. Include proposed factories, outside engineers and subcontractors.
Resolve permitted onward disclosure before release. Have counsel help define the purpose, authorised recipients and process for adding another recipient. “Our team needs it” leaves too much unanswered if the team includes an unnamed external factory. If the contact cannot identify the intended recipients, keep the sensitive release on hold.
WIPO's trade-secret guidance includes reasonable steps to keep valuable confidential information secret, confidentiality agreements and control of document access. That supports treating access as a deliberate decision. It does not establish that your particular design qualifies for protection or that an agreement prevents copying.
Send a limited follow-up first
The first fictional message concerns an estimate, with no sensitive assembly attached:
"Please quote against brief CAP-Q1, revision A, for the quantities and delivery scope listed there. This brief omits the internal mechanism. State your assumptions, exclusions and any specific additional information needed to assess feasibility. Before we release restricted files, please identify the receiving business and any proposed factory or external engineer who would need access. We have not authorised production."
Keep that message and the exact brief in the supplier file. Compare the candidates' responses. One may explain a precise information gap; another may insist on the whole folder without explaining the work it intends to perform. You can use that difference when deciding whom to continue with.
The sample-order guide covers a later sample purchase. Sending information for a quotation should not silently authorise a prototype, tooling expense or sample order.
Agree use restrictions before the sensitive release
Harris Sliwoski's manufacturing-contract discussion recommends addressing protection before sharing CAD files, specifications or prototypes. Treat that as professional commentary and obtain advice for your own arrangement. A generic NDA should not replace review of the actual information, receiving parties and intended activities.
Ask counsel to distinguish disclosure restrictions from use restrictions. Your supplier may need permission to evaluate the mechanism while you intend to prohibit unrelated development or commercial use. Discuss onward transfer, retention or deletion after evaluation, and the handling of copies and backups. Agree workable terms before opening access; this article supplies no enforceable clause or universal remedy.
Once your team has approved the recipients and agreement, the second fictional message can record the limited release:
"Under our agreed evaluation terms, we are releasing CAP-E2, revision B, to the named engineering recipients for the feasibility assessment described in the agreement. The attached manifest lists the files and versions. Please confirm receipt and tell us before requesting access for any additional party. This release does not approve a production drawing or order."
The message records a handover under an existing agreement. It is not a substitute for that agreement.
Keep a disclosure register you can use later
Record the recipient business and authorised people, purpose, agreement reference, release date, file identifiers and versions, and the access method. Preserve the released files and receipt confirmation. For a controlled folder, restrict access to the approved recipients and review it when the evaluation ends. Revoking a link cannot retrieve copies someone already downloaded.
After selecting a manufacturer, settle the separate specification and production approvals. The factory-order payment plan helps connect those approvals to commercial stages. Your disclosure register answers who received information for which purpose; it does not establish which drawing the factory must produce.
Use pay an invoice to ask A2vanta about a proposed supplier payment before funding. Payment handling does not protect your design or validate confidentiality terms. Your team controls the disclosure decision before any files or funds leave it.