We get that the contractor claims that they put a time limit in the license, and we know that they hid a technical enforcement mechanism in it. But what matter

We get that the contractor claims that they put a time limit in the license, and we know that they hid a technical enforcement mechanism in it. But what matters is the contract that they signed for the development contract that they undertook. It could be that ORQA’s lawyers really screwed up, but in every contract-for-code I have ever encountered (either directly or through friends), the copyright of the written code ends up belonging to the company hiring the contractor, not the contractor. Given the way the contractor handled the “license violation”, they’ve already put themselves in the unethical behavior bin and so I don’t trust them unless they demonstrate that the contracts they agreed to left the copyright with the contractor, and included a time limit. The latter especially would be “time to fire our law firm” moment for ORQA, if it’s actually what has happened.