From a purely generic contract law / intellectual property rights stand point the circumstances could have gone down the same way with US based contract manufacturing partners. Of course the details of if / how / where the "still borne" product could see the light of day for a US firm are a whole lot different due to , among other things, the long history of these sorts of cases being litigated . I seem to recall that men back to Eli Whitney and Alexandar Graham Bell were involved in these kinds of controversies... China is eons behind in that regard, and may have reason why they never really want to "catch up" to courts in the West. Frankly even firms like Siemens, Nokia, Alcatel and other Euro-Zone firms have legal separations for their US divisions for largely political reason back home.

The thought occurs to me that with the current unemployment situation, the wind down of activities related to high tech military electronics that were rushed into production to support Iraq and Afgahanistan which should free up skilled electronics assemblers in California , as well as the favorable rates for business investment that there should be more opportunies to "on shore" certain consumer electronics activities. It would great if Outlaw could work the "proud to be made in the USA" angle into a viable future offering....