[zwp]

> reaching out to the old developers to see if they have a copy

I think you mean "older devs that are still with the company" but I was once contacted by a former employer for exactly this: they had lost source code for the billing system. I didn't have the source code so that was easy to answer. Developers that have stolen intellectual property from former employers may want to consider carefully how they answer such questions...

Also, I was never supposed to have had access to this code whilst I was employed so I did wonder if there was more to it than just "oops we lost it can you help?". Perhaps they were trying to chase down a leak or something? I never heard back though (they survived).

[Piskvorrr]

If you barge in, lawyers blazing, shouting about "stolen intellectual property", the likely response is "don't have any, never had", regardless of its veracity. OTOH, "disks that are left unerased by accident" _and_ generally being very open on the nature of the emergency is much more likely to bring help.

[adrianpike]

This case is one I'd be pretty careful about though as a former employee - the situation the company's found themselves in is pretty indicative of mismanagement, and desperate people do desperate things.

IANAL, but a hold harmless agreement would be a simple CYA that I'd do if I was personally in this situation.

[Piskvorrr]

Indeed. That's why I wrote, in essence "if you start with 'you surely HAVE our code, GIMME!!!!!'", the answer will always be 'nope', regardless of facts".