From what I can see, the story is far too murky to make any intelligent observations about third-party IP rights at this point. Generally speaking, if a third-

From what I can see, the story is far too murky to make any intelligent observations about third-party IP rights at this point. Generally speaking, if a third-party contractor did work on the project, that party could potentially have IP rights to its work, but not if it did so as a work-for-hire and assigned rights to whoever retained it. If there were no work-for-hire or IP assignments, then any contractor that might have done software development or hardware design could potentially assert infringement claims if its IP is used without benefit of a license agreement to the party using it. Without further details, though, it is impossible to assess this.