I am sorry to hear about your father's passing.

If your father had rights to the patent (i.e., he did not assign it to his employer, or he has not otherwise sold it or licensed it), then you should treat the patent the same as any other personal property.

Good luck!

Depending on the method utilized to "drum up business" there may or may not be any liability. There are a number of causes of action that most lawyers would be able to think of depending on what was said and sometimes even how something was said. Damages would be difficult to prove and... View More

To appropriately answer this question a lawyer would require a lot of additional information, but generally, justifiable cause is a very funny thing and rarely do two people agree on what it means without established case law that is on point. You will want to have a business lawyer take a look at... View More

For purposes of this answer I will assume that the business is simply inactive and that the necessary State filings have not been done. Therefore, you question would be when does the State revoke a business for failure to pay fees. Generally, you have two years before the State will not allow a... View More

Unfortunately you are in a difficult situation. Most businesses would not put a customer through an ordeal such as this without an extremely good reason to do so and it sounds as though this business did not have such a reason.

You could certainly hire an attorney to make a demand upon the... View More