I own a small company and submitted a proposal to a major company and I received no response. Another company considered my proposal and invited me to present the proposal to the board.
I was asked if I have submitted this proposal anywhere else, and I said no. A board member was an employee of the first company, and shared my letter to the first company with the board. And then, the board decided to reject the proposal because I was not honest with them.
As I checked, there is no official connection between two companies. In other words, he shared my letter based on his personal knowledge rather than official relationship between two companies.
My proposal was intended for the first company, and I do not see any legal ground for sharing it with a third party. I did not write "confidential" on my letter, but I assumed a business proposal is automatically considered as a confidential material.
How is the legal situation here?