Recently my company was asked by a customer to develop a control board that includes firmware and PCB layout development. After finishing development the customer will buy the control boards at certain quantity every year.
We are now at making contract stage, the customer is wanting my company to handover both the firmware source files and PCB layout files after development. We could give the PCB layout files but we don't want to give the firmware files as we're worried about they may find third party to produce the control board so that we may have nothing.
However from the customer point of view, they are concerned that they could be in risk situation if my company for some reason stops selling the boards. Is there any "common" practice to make contract regarding this?