I am not a lawyer, but it should be cheap enough to ask one for an opinion that counts. But I'll toss my opinion out there. This is not unique to startups and

I am not a lawyer, but it should be cheap enough to ask one for an opinion that counts. But I'll toss my opinion out there. This is not unique to startups and/or founders. Likeness is a contractually controllable commodity, e.g. using your image, reputation etc. The catch 22 for you is that as long as the current team is not mis-representing your role or current activity, I think it may be tough for you to stop. But I think you can likely get it stopped if they are mis-representing your current level of involvement. Think of it this way, it really would be no different then a company saying hey, Bill Gates was one of our co-founders, he left the company to pursue clean water but ya know he really gave us a good start. I think that would be tough to stop, but I could be wrong. I have had prior employers use my involvement with a project to prove to a new customer that the people who created the product had industry credibility. Is that illegal? I seriously doubt it, my bet is that they have the right to say that as long as they don't mis-represent that I am still working the project. I personally do not like that one employer did that, because I really did not believe in the updates they made to the product. At the same time I did not pursue whether there was anything I could do about it. I figured if anyone ever asked me, I'd just tell them the truth at that point. My bet is a lot of engineers have had this happen and just do not realize it.