When the supplier changes hands
Selling an automotive supplier: what happens to its engineering data
A buyer of an automotive supplier, or of its engineering record alone, inherits the carmakers' clauses that came with each programme. Here is what those clauses say about confidentiality and returning what was lent.
Confidentiality outlives the contract
Volvo Group's general purchasing conditions keep information, know-how and technical documentation obtained through the relationship confidential for the life of the purchase agreement and ten years after it. Mercedes-Benz do Brasil's terms bind the supplier to confidentiality during the contract and after its termination.
Source: Volvo Group, General Purchasing Conditions (January 2015)
Lent material goes back
Mercedes-Benz's Australian terms require its blueprints, tools and other goods to be returned when an order is completed or terminated, and Volkswagen Poznań's require drawings, calculations and models it supplied to be returned forthwith once the contract is done.
Source: What carmakers' purchase terms say about a supplier's designs
If the supplier is closing
Volvo Group's conditions ask an insolvent supplier to tell Volvo at once and to help it acquire the typebound tooling needed to make its parts. micro1's company-referral page says it is acquiring data from companies that are no longer operating.
Source: micro1, company referral