Questionable move by the prospective client

[paulney]

Here's the situation:

Company B subcontracts for company A for a Client. There are no non-solicitation clauses in B's subcontract. B has a status of an independent subcontractor.

After a while company A falls out with Client and it is imminent that it will get booted out. Employees of the Client advise company B to submit its own proposal to provide same services as company A. Company B does so without notifying company A.

Company A gets booted out. Company B's proposal makes its way through the chain of command until it reaches a person who has his own pet project going on. To keep the pet project going on, this person rejects the business proposal, but in rejecting it, replies to everyone in the chain below him, who was not even supposed to see business proposal (prices, proposed operation practices, etc) and also sends it to company A.

---

Any recourse for the company B now? The business proposal contained competitive information, and now Client's employee disclosed it to company A (out of spite or for whatever other reasons).

Thanks.

 

[paulney]

No advices? Not even a snarky remark?

The client's brazenness bugs me. On one hand, it's time to walk away - no use in pounding the sand. But sending the sensitive information to the other company is over the line.

 

[mugs]

Of course your recourse would be to sue them if they harmed your business... but did they really harm your business? How could you be a subcrontactor for company A and keep all of that information secret?

 

[paulney]

Both company A and us are in the same business. Imagine a company who is installing windows subcontracting another window company to actually do the installation, because they are themselves at capacity or want to play the role of the middleman. We do not know their cut, but we can guess. Now, if the client wants us to install windows for him excluding company A, we'd be happy to. And we'll provide our own pricing model, competitive to company A, and also how we accept orders, how they are dispatched, how they are executed, why we have a competitive advantage, etc. Now the client sends all this info to company A. Company A now has insider info and can leverage that for future tenders where we go head to head.

 

[beat mania]

Originally posted by: paulney
No advices? Not even a snarky remark?

Why don't you worry about company A not suing you first.

Did you mark the bid that you sent as proprietary/confidential information and did the client sign a NDA?

 

[paulney]

Originally posted by: beat mania

Originally posted by: paulney
No advices? Not even a snarky remark?

Why don't you worry about company A not suing you first.

Did you mark the bid that you sent as proprietary/confidential information and did the client sign a NDA?

No, it was not marked as confidential (our mistake). No NDA either in this case.

On what grounds would company A sue - they had their contract with the client terminated anyway. No business or profits lost through our conduct.

And there was no clause about non-solicitation in our contract with them. In fact, we were solicited to submit a proposal by the client, and before we did so, we submitted a new contract with company A which had very basic wording of an independent contractor's status of company B and explicitly voided any and all pre-existing contracts with them.

 

[beat mania]

Yeah I misread that thinking you had a non-solicitation clause.

Not much you can do if he's cc'ing your non confidential info around ...

 

[dman]

Originally posted by: paulney
Here's the situation:

Company B subcontracts for company A for a Client. There are no non-solicitation clauses in B's subcontract. B has a status of an independent subcontractor.

After a while company A falls out with Client and it is imminent that it will get booted out. Employees of the Client advise company B to submit its own proposal to provide same services as company A.
---

Any recourse for the company B now? The business proposal contained competitive information, and now Client's employee disclosed it to company A (out of spite or for whatever other reasons).

Really, imo, Company A should be the one upset at Company B. In those situations Company B should have cleared it with Company A first before submitting the bid to the customer. Depending on the reason for the fallout, Company A may have been fine with it (they already lost the business). Either way though, it wouldn't be sneaking around after the fact and would have kept the partnership option open in the future.

 

[waggy]

sounds like company B has nothing it can do.

as Dman said i would be worried about Company A more then worried about what you can do to the client. but yeah the person at the client is a dick. i would complain to his boss etc. but i don't see what you can do..besides maybe get that guy fired.

 

[TheKub]

Originally posted by: dman
Really, imo, Company A should be the one upset at Company B. In those situations Company B should have cleared it with Company A first before submitting the bid to the customer. Depending on the reason for the fallout, Company A may have been fine with it (they already lost the business). Either way though, it wouldn't be sneaking around after the fact and would have kept the partnership option open in the future.

B was doing the work on A's behalf so because A screwed the pooch B is out the work too. I don't see anything wrong with them submitting the bid. That being said if A is a major contributer of work to B then they are likely endangering that relationship.

And as for the client CCing the info. Unless there was an agreement with the client, the documents were marked confidential, or the client has some governing rules about how it handles bids (ie government) there really isnt anything B can do, other than severing ties with the client.

 

[Gibson486]

Welcome to the world of consulting. There is nothing you can do. It does not matter that there is no "non-solicitation " clause because your client chose to kick the company out. Also, AFAIK, you cannot keep a proposal secret unless you are dealing with a client who wants to keep it secret. After all, you are not bidding for for work (well, atleast not in a competitive manner). Also, table rates are hardly kept secret by any firm.

 

[RKS]

you gotta show damages. if there are no damages, there is nothing to sue over.