How Can You Market a Product that Has been Developed and Sold to a Company that Demanded Exclusivity to Other Clients in a Legal and Orderly Manner?

 

You worked hard for a year; you invested thousands of working hours in smart and innovating developments, in countless internal meetings, in endless discussions with the board and with the investors, and the client demanded that the product be developed exclusively for its use.

The terms with the client prohibit you from selling same product to other clients.

Nonetheless, there is a way to market the product to other clients in a way that will save you the cost of development, and that will not violate your obligations to the original client or in any way break the terms of the contract.

And most importantly, this way will produce revenues and net profits.

I played a leading role in a long and complex negotiation with a large international company.

This company demanded exclusivity for the product we had developed, exclusivity being a precondition for signing the deal.

As the legal consultant of the R&D Company, I strategically introduced a smart mechanism into the agreement that permitted our company to sell the same product to other clients as well, with the agreement of the client, by strictly narrowing the boundaries of the exclusivity agreement to a very specific area.

The original client agreed to receive a very specific component of the “carburetor” of the software that would be developed exclusively for them and that would be compatible only with their product.

The rest of the components of the “car” developed, which were of less interest to the client, could then be copied into other software.

Our company was subsequently able to enter into another large deal with a competitor of the original client without causing bad relations and without breaking the terms of the agreement.