A project team added a new member who has proprietary information about a competitor's product. The team member was suddenly removed from the project. Which of the following MOST likely occurred?

A C&D is a formal legal demand - often issued by a competitor - requiring that a party halt an activity that threatens proprietary information or intellectual property. If a new team member carries proprietary competitor knowledge, the competitor could issue a C&D to prevent that person from contributing to a competing effort, making sudden removal the legally required response.

A higher-priority project requiring the member's expertise would be an internal resource reallocation decision, not a sudden legally compelled removal tied to competitor proprietary data.

An unsigned NDA protects the current company's confidential information from being shared outward, but it does not address a competitor's rights over information a new hire already possesses.

An SLA defines service-level commitments between a provider and client and has no bearing on restricting team membership based on intellectual property concerns.