> 1) Has anybody run into a request like this? How would you respond? Yes. Satisfy their justification without showing code. It is possible to show how algorit

> 1) Has anybody run into a request like this? How would you respond? Yes. Satisfy their justification without showing code. It is possible to show how algorithms made their decisions. Make this part of your product. You already noticed there is a demand for it and that delivering a black box can be a deal-breaker. So read up on LIME, decision paths, interpretable models on black box output, etc. and give them the capability to see how an algo made its decision. > 2) How likely do you think their goal is to genuinely "see what happens under the hood" as opposed to replicate in the future? Unlikely they'll replicate. It would set them up for legal problems. Depending on how deep your moat is (training data, novel optimization techniques, encoded domain expertise), they probably wouldn't even need to see source to replicate in-house. It may be more about not being hood-winked, paying top dollar for a product that does a few imports from open source libraries. > 3) Are there any legal protections we can put in place to prevent them from not just copy-pasting our code, but also from "learning from it" or so? Not that I know of. Perhaps you could charge extra for the code review, so in the case of "learning from it" they'll at least pay for it. A thought exercise: did you learn from open source/open research/commercial solutions before building your Proof-of-Concept? If no, then they don't need to either (provided they can hire the talent), if yes, you are like a thief who is worried they will steal from you :).