We used be a partner with a US company in which we developed products that are active X addins using their API . We signed a partnership agreement with them.
This company terminated the agreement (after almost 20 years) stating that our technology direction was no longer compatible with theirs.
The partnership agreement has some quite onerous post termination clauses which prevent us from continuing to development of the products.
We have another product that relates to this company’s product, but it is not an addin, instead it connects to their product using an Out of process COM connection.
I am wandering what rights they have that might prevent us from releasing this product.
Does anyone one have any opinions/experience on the subject?
It would be entirely down to the wording of what you signed. And it could be open to interpretation, plus the interpretation may depend on legal domicile. So, even an NDA may potentially prevent you from doing it, if it covers intangibles like know-how or trade secrets, because it may well fall into one of these categories. Tricky…
Just for your FYI, I have split your post off into a new topic on the forums. Please don’t use reply in your mail client to post new topics… the forums look at the email headers and figure out you are replying to a thread, so your email post ends up as a reply in a completely unrelated topic.
Might be advisable to get some proper legal advice. It would probably be a reasonably specialised area though so finding someone with the relevant expertise may be a task in itself.
Is it just because of a technology change? Or do they would to make their own version of your product?
Another option would be try to contact them and find out what they think.