tech-company, intellectual-propertyA company which produced software I was following was shut down last October. They posted
On Wednesday, Oct 19th, Slingshot Capital Partners, the group who own Trapdoor decided to close our company immediately.
What happens to the technology that Trapdoor had developed in this situation? I presume from context that the developers can’t just take the code (and art, data, etc) and keep working on it themselves, but what generally is done with it in these cases? Would Slingshot (theoretically; if they want it) keep a copy of everything developed, with the potential option of selling it or starting a new company to resume work on it? Is it just summarily deleted?
Also, what would prevent the developers from just stating over, based on what they remember of the code, aside from lack of time and money?
The majority owners of the company being shut down will generally try to sell IP to regain some of their investment loss. More often, patents are being sold because they are fairly easy to sell, and you can get a good price for them.
Selling software is much harder. Since the company failed, it isn’t likely that someone else could take over the code and make it profitable. There is also a lot of overhead in getting new coders to get up to speed with a code base that they haven’t seen before.
The developers can’t use any of the company IP unless they specifically buy it from the owners. If they ask nicely, the owners could potentially give it to them.
The developers could start over again and recreate the company from scratch. In this situation, there is some risk that they could be accused of appropriating their former company’s IP, so they should avoid any out right copying of the former product (e.g., different name and design). If the software isn’t sold to anyone else, however, then it is fair to say that no one is going to care.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.