I don't think any BIGCO would go for that since they need to build it out or buy it one way or the other. That would be nice, but I don't think it is feasible. Also, regardless of the law, I don't think it would be worth the cost or time pursuing. In general, the process was okay, the main issue was the very obvious change in communication half way through the process. If they launch and fully copy our innovations that will be somewhat annoying but the cost of doing business. I may post a follow up then if it happens. So far they haven't done anything nefarious.
Thanks for the insight. Fortunately, this is not core to our offering, it is really a marketing avenue to have one of the larger sites in the world using something front and center. Regarding the burning bridges comment, nothing negative was done on our side, but the level of professionalism was low on theirs and I don't feel this was just an oversight. We had unreturned emails at the end. My impression was they were incredibly responsive with immediate returns at the start, then at some point they decided to build it and communication stopped. I wouldn't consider it a negative experience if they had simply said at that time that they were not interested, but they dragged things out another month which was of little utility. Will be interested to see if our unique features end up in their offering since the dev team was pretty excited about certain things. It is fine really, everyone copies everyone else and our work is derivative too. But it's a little different if you are seeing something before release. This was not intended as an attack on MS just to let people know what the experience can be like and most importantly to get the right contact at Yahoo which it seems like we may have now!