Hello, I have a situation at the moment where our app developer agency based in Portugal (that we started working with in 2019) was bought by a new company in 2023. We had two contract with them before they were bought for two fixed projects. We entered into a monthly payment (but not under any contract) for developer time to develop/improve the fixed project technology.
We have never been issued a new contract by the agency that bought the original company in 2023. The last contract we had was issued by the previous company, which was a 12 month contract in Janaury 2022. This contract ended before the company was bought by the new company. We continued to buy monthly support as we continued to need coding.
After the new company removed team members who had worked on our app in December, we decided to email that we would end our work with them with immediate effect in the first week of January.
It's now clear that we have no contract with them, we are under no agreement with them. They have no claimed we need to give a notice period, they have a claim to our IP (the contracts we had with the original app developer agency that was bought stated that we own all the IP generated)
My view is, we are not in any contract, we have no requirement to give notice (as we have no Ts&Cs to adhere too) and we are also not liable for the previos months invoice, as there is no contract to enforce that invoice.
I'm looking for someone to provide legal advice (and exposure risk) and response to this situation.
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