For the future, don't give any company you're hoping to work for anything untill you're ona contract. You can show it to them untill you're blue in the face, but never hand anything over untill you're on a payroll. It's also best to have 3 or 4 companies looking at your design. That way, they can't pull the "Fine, we'll just hire someone else to do it" bit.

Looks shouldn't matter. He CREATED the system, they should PAY him for it. He could be the Hunchback for all it matters. While some people are shallow, it shouldn't matter.

What the ****?!? No, even in France, there's no legal action, generally speaking, to be taken when you get turned down for a job. You don't have a ******* right to whatever job you decide you'd like. OP: when the government makes it more difficult to fire a bad employee on the back end, employers hire fewer people on the front end, and subject those they do hire to stricter criteria. My guess is you're a victim of France's "job-protection" regime, even after Sarkozy's easing of the same.

That depends. The reason the OP was turned down in favor of someone else might not be legal, which would explain the obviously fake reason OP was told.

He means for taking the software without payment -_-

There's no indication they took anything without payment. Vanita - possible, but unlikely. More likely is that he actually didn't have the experience they were looking for. Regardless, it would require a lot more of a showing than can even remotely be inferred from the OP.