At times, the nature of your work may lead you to ask your freelancer to sign an external non-disclosure agreement (NDAs). To make that easier, we include NDAs as an optional job term. However, please note that these agreements are strictly between you and your freelancers — Upwork will not enforce them.
Even if you do not request an NDA, the Upwork Terms of Service contain default non-disclosure terms for you and your freelancer. These terms, which you can read in Section 7 here, include the following:
- The freelancer agrees to keep all information learned as part of the project confidential, and vice versa.
- You grant a freelancer limited rights to use any materials you share to do the work defined in your contract, but you retain the IP rights. When the project wraps up, or on your request, the freelancer agrees to return or destroy your materials.
- Once paid in full, the freelancer retains no rights to use it — any IP the project has generated becomes your property. The exception is any background technology that’s been specifically identified up front.
