Eligibility and Confidentiality

ELIGIBILITY

ELIGIBILITY

  1. Individual students or teams of up to 3 may enter the competition.
  2. Students must be either part or full-time students during the semester of the competition or an alumnus who had graduated in the past year.
  3. All members of the team pitching in the Bark Tank Competition must be available to attend the final event.
  4. Students or teams who were awarded a prize in the final round of last year’s Bark Tank competition (first place, second place or people’s choice) may not pitch the same business or idea in this year’s competition; they are eligible to compete again with different business concept.  Ventures that did not reach the final stage of the competition may be pitched in a subsequent year.
  5. The venture cannot be a wholly owned subsidiary of an existing company or non-profit organization.
  6. Both for-profit and non-profit models are eligible, but the idea must incorporate an income-generating model that will lead to financial sustainability.
  7. Individual participants cannot be a member of more than one team competing in the event.
  8. The Bark Tank Planning Committee reserves the right to address any circumstances in which the above rules do not apply.  All decisions will be final.  The Committee also reserves the right to clarify, amend, or change these rules when deemed necessary for fairness.

CONFIDENTIALITY

CONFIDENTIALITY

  1. Only the Bark Tank Planning Committee and the judges assigned to evaluate each team will have access to the team’s written submissions. Judges will be asked to treat all information with complete confidentiality.
  2. Entrants should feel free to mark any material submitted as confidential, and to exclude any information that is considered to be truly proprietary.  As a rule of thumb, participants who believe they have a potential intellectual property concern should seek legal advice before making any public disclosures.
  3. Judges, mentors, staff, legal counsel and any individual attending any public sessions of the competitions will NOT be asked or required to agree to or sign non-disclosure, confidentiality or other similar agreements. Competitors are advised not to disclose any information that they would be uncomfortable seeing in the public domain.
  4. Final presentations will be open to the public.  Any information or data disclosed in these sessions should be considered information that is likely to enter the public domain. Competitors should not assume any right of confidentiality to any information presented or discussed in public sessions. Please be aware that members of the media, potential competitors, and members of the financial community may attend public sessions.
  5. By participating in the competition, competitors agree that the Bark Tank Competition assumes no liability for disclosures of information provided by an individual or team as part of a submission or otherwise during the course of the pitch competitions.