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Legal and awards / A4

NDA HTML template

A mutual confidentiality agreement with the two commercially significant terms, the definition of confidential information and the duration, pulled out into a box.

When this document is the right one

Two parties are about to exchange information before there is a contract. The document is signed quickly and often without legal review, which is exactly why the terms that carry the risk should be impossible to skim past.

Why each part is there

The fields are visible in the markup. What is not visible is why they are present, which is the part that gets removed first when someone adapts a template for their own use.

  • A key terms box carrying the purpose, the definition, the duration and the governing law, because those four are what actually differ between one NDA and another.
  • Exclusions as a lettered list, since they are the clause most often read and most often argued about.
  • A required-disclosure clause, because a confidentiality obligation that ignores court orders is unenforceable in the part that matters.
  • An explicit statement that nothing here obliges either party to disclose, to deal, or to enter a further agreement.
  • A backup carve-out in the return and destruction clause, because nobody can actually delete a file from every backup and a clause requiring it is a clause being breached.

The template

A complete file. Doctype, stylesheet, body: paste it into a renderer unchanged and it produces a finished A4 page. Replace the sample data and the styling holds.

html
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Mutual non-disclosure agreement</title>
<style>
  @page { size: A4; margin: 24mm 22mm; }
  * { box-sizing: border-box; }
  body { margin: 0; font: 10pt/1.65 "Times New Roman", Times, serif; color: #111; }

  h1 { text-align: center; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: 0.06em;
       text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0 0 8mm; }
  .preamble { border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; padding-bottom: 6mm; margin-bottom: 6mm; }
  .party-line { margin-bottom: 3mm; }
  .party-line strong { font-variant: small-caps; }

  section { margin-bottom: 5mm; }
  h2 { font-size: 10.5pt; margin: 0 0 2mm; break-after: avoid; }
  p { margin: 0 0 3mm; text-align: justify; }

  /* Two things carry all the risk in an NDA: what counts as confidential and
     how long the obligation lasts. Both are put in a box so they are read. */
  .keyterm { border: 1px solid #111; padding: 4mm 5mm; margin: 5mm 0;
             background: #fafafa; break-inside: avoid; }
  .keyterm dl { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 46mm 1fr; gap: 2mm 5mm; margin: 0;
                font: 9.5pt/1.5 Arial, sans-serif; }
  .keyterm dt { color: #555; }
  .keyterm dd { margin: 0; }

  ol { padding-left: 6mm; margin: 0 0 3mm; }
  li { margin-bottom: 2mm; }

  .execution { margin-top: 10mm; break-inside: avoid; }
  .sig-grid { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; gap: 14mm; margin-top: 6mm; }
  .sig-grid .line { border-bottom: 1px solid #111; height: 14mm; margin-bottom: 1.5mm; }
  .sig-grid .cap { font: 8pt Arial, sans-serif; color: #555; margin-bottom: 4mm; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement</h1>

  <div class="preamble">
    <div class="party-line">
      <strong>Between:</strong> Kilnworks Studio Ltd, company number 11447203, of
      Unit 9, Riverside Works, Bath BA2 3EU.
    </div>
    <div class="party-line">
      <strong>And:</strong> Ravenshill Hotel Group Ltd, company number 08812204, of
      The Old Rectory, Bath BA1 2QP.
    </div>
    <div class="party-line"><strong>Dated:</strong> 14 May 2026.</div>
  </div>

  <div class="keyterm">
    <dl>
      <dt>Purpose</dt>
      <dd>Evaluating and, if agreed, delivering a bespoke tableware range for the
        Client's Bath and Wells properties.</dd>
      <dt>Confidential Information</dt>
      <dd>Information disclosed by either party that is marked confidential, or that a
        reasonable person would understand to be confidential from its nature or the
        circumstances of disclosure. Glaze formulations, kiln schedules, supplier
        pricing and unreleased property plans are confidential whether marked or not.</dd>
      <dt>Term of obligation</dt>
      <dd>Three years from the date of disclosure. Trade secrets remain protected for
        as long as they remain trade secrets.</dd>
      <dt>Governing law</dt>
      <dd>England and Wales.</dd>
    </dl>
  </div>

  <section>
    <h2>1. Obligations</h2>
    <p>
      Each party shall keep the other's Confidential Information confidential, use it
      only for the Purpose, and disclose it only to those of its employees,
      contractors and professional advisers who need it for the Purpose and who are
      bound by obligations no less protective than these. Each party remains
      responsible for any breach by a person to whom it discloses.
    </p>
  </section>

  <section>
    <h2>2. Exclusions</h2>
    <p>The obligations in clause 1 do not apply to information that:</p>
    <ol type="a">
      <li>is or becomes public through no breach of this agreement;</li>
      <li>the receiving party already held without a duty of confidence, and can show that it did;</li>
      <li>is lawfully received from a third party free to disclose it; or</li>
      <li>is independently developed without use of the disclosing party's information.</li>
    </ol>
  </section>

  <section>
    <h2>3. Required disclosure</h2>
    <p>
      A party may disclose Confidential Information where required by law, a court or
      a regulator. Where it is lawful to do so, it shall give the disclosing party
      prompt notice and reasonable assistance in seeking protective treatment, and
      shall disclose only what is required.
    </p>
  </section>

  <section>
    <h2>4. No licence and no obligation</h2>
    <p>
      Nothing in this agreement transfers any intellectual property or grants any
      licence, and nothing obliges either party to disclose anything, to enter into a
      further agreement, or to refrain from dealing with third parties.
    </p>
  </section>

  <section>
    <h2>5. Return and destruction</h2>
    <p>
      On written request, each party shall return or destroy the other's Confidential
      Information and confirm in writing that it has done so. A party may keep one
      copy where it is required by law or by its ordinary backup practice, and that
      copy remains subject to this agreement.
    </p>
  </section>

  <section>
    <h2>6. Remedies</h2>
    <p>
      Each party acknowledges that damages alone may not be an adequate remedy for
      breach of this agreement, and that the other party is entitled to seek
      injunctive relief in addition to any other remedy available to it.
    </p>
  </section>

  <div class="execution">
    <p><strong>Signed by the duly authorised representatives of the parties.</strong></p>
    <div class="sig-grid">
      <div>
        <div class="line"></div><div class="cap">For Kilnworks Studio Ltd</div>
        <div class="line"></div><div class="cap">Name and position</div>
        <div class="line"></div><div class="cap">Date</div>
      </div>
      <div>
        <div class="line"></div><div class="cap">For Ravenshill Hotel Group Ltd</div>
        <div class="line"></div><div class="cap">Name and position</div>
        <div class="line"></div><div class="cap">Date</div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</body>
</html>

The layout decision worth understanding

The key terms box is the design decision on this document. Everything in it also appears in the clauses, and the duplication is deliberate: the box is what gets read, the clauses are what gets enforced, and putting the commercially significant terms in both is how those two audiences are served at once.

The mistake people make adapting it

Setting a perpetual duration because longer sounds safer. In several jurisdictions an unlimited term is harder to enforce than a defined one, and a counterparty's legal team will spend a week on that clause instead of signing.

Rendering it

The page box is declared in the template's own CSS as A4, so the size travels with the markup rather than living in the code that calls the renderer. A4 is also one of the six named formats the API accepts, so it can be passed in the request options instead if that suits your setup better.

bash
curl -X POST https://api.pdfpipe.xyz/v1/pdf \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PDFPIPE_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "html": "<!doctype html>...",
    "options": { "format": "A4" }
  }' \
  --output nda.pdf

Frequently asked

Can I use this template commercially?

Yes. Copy it, change it, ship it. It is sample markup written to be taken, and the sample data in it is invented, so replace the names and the numbers before anyone sees it.

Why is the page size in the CSS rather than in the API call?

Because a non-disclosure agreement is a A4 document, and that is a property of the document rather than of the code that renders it. Declaring it in the page box means the size cannot be lost between the template and the call, which is the usual way a document ends up on the wrong paper.

Will it look the same in every renderer?

The layout will, because it uses ordinary CSS. The page break behaviour will not: break-inside and break-after are implemented differently by browser engines and by dedicated print engines, and some of the paged media specification is not implemented in browser renders at all. That difference is documented per property in the paged CSS reference.

Other templates

Documents from the same part of a business, and one from each of the other groups.

Paste the template into the playground and get the PDF back. No signup, no key.