this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Technology

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[–] SaltSong@startrek.website 101 points 8 hours ago (5 children)

I find it hard to believe that it's legal to buy a company, but not it's contractual obligations. Seems line a hell of a loophole for getting out of things you don't want to do.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 2 points 40 minutes ago* (last edited 37 minutes ago)

Yet it is.

You can go to a company and ask to buy their office building. Or the name trademark. Or staff. Or customer database. Or website. And you continue this until you've acquired literally everything the company has except the actual company itself - it's called an "asset acquisition" - so you get all the stuff, but because the original company technically still exists it's left with most of the liabilities.
Most, because some liabilities thankfully do transfer.

In this instance:

According to VPNSecure’s owners, their acquisition netted them “the tech, the brand, and the infrastructure/technology—but none of the company, contracts, payments, or obligations from the previous owners.”

...how you can claim not to have gotten the contracts, yet be in a position to cancel them sound a bit of a, well, lie.

[–] ture@lemmy.ml 29 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

They claim they didn't bought the contractual obligations, so to be fair they should cancel all subscription and not just the lifetime subscriptions. But obviously it's just a bullshit claim by some corpo...

[–] jonathan@lemmy.zip 28 points 5 hours ago

If the customers came across in the transaction, so did the contractual obligations. You can't have it both ways.

[–] aramova@infosec.pub 47 points 8 hours ago

Capitalism at work baby

[–] festus@lemmy.ca 22 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Probably legal (for the buying company) but customers should sue the original company and get paid out of the money used to buy it.

[–] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 2 points 46 minutes ago (1 children)

No you probably sue them both.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 21 minutes ago

Yeah, suing just one or the other will have them deflecting and finger-pointing in court. Suing both forces both of them to actually meet at the same table in front of the judge, instead of one or the other deflecting to some distant entity that isn’t in the courtroom.

[–] cattywampas@lemm.ee 6 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

This would almost certainly depend on the contracts themselves.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 11 points 4 hours ago

Contracts always have some bullshit like: "We can do whatever the fuck we want. Service not guaranteed. We have the right to refuse service to anyone. Lifetime is defined by the lifetime of the service which is defined by us. Can change at anytime."