Were there other signs they wanted to copy besides "asked for the source code and they wanted it all the time they needed to study it by themselves"? I'm curious about the red flags to look out for when negotiating such deals
The second company (Telco) was the opposite. The requirements were vague and its R&D team felt attacked because a local division of the company in UK chose us versus them. So I listed what they could see of our code and how (white room, our computers, no network, partnering with us all the time...) and I asked for a scoring method based on their requirements to know if we passed or not the test. They rejected all our conditions. They wanted the code to give us the “blessing”.
The funny thing about this Telco is the UK branch signed the deal no matter what R&D said. As I said R&D tried to hire our Team. They failed. Then they spent 2 years developing a copycat of our solution to replace us in UK. And when they finally were ready, the cost and impact of transition to their solution was too high, and the copycat solution was abandoned.
How to know if are good or bad guys? It’s hard. When both parts want to sign a deal everybody gets involved and pushes towards the goal. Also, connect to companies that did that before to tell you their story. For example, the Telco had an “extractive” reputation and people warned me.