Legal Question in Business Law in Pennsylvania

I own an IT service company and have been doing work without a contract for over 20 years. The non profit is a humane society. I designed and created a database and have been keying names and addresses for all that time. We do extractions and mailings of their data.

New CEO does not want to use my company anymore. She is not very bright and is not doing any business with any old vendors.

She wants her data sent back.

I gave her a cost for doing the extraction and formatting of the data and she rejected paying for anything.

She wants the data deleted and again I gave her a cost for the extraction and deleting the data. She went postal and indicated they own the data and wants it back for free.

Who owns the data. Everything done on the data was done as an outsourced activity.


Asked on 9/28/12, 5:00 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys
Michael Kotik Lawyer Michael Kotik | Criminal Lawyer

Ownership of the data would depend on your contract with the company. To the extent you do not have a contract with them it would be difficult to determine who actually owns the rights to all of the data. You might have formed a oral agreement of some sort. To figure this out I would need more information as to what happened.

Please feel free to contact me at 267-265-4553.

Attorney Michael Kotik, Esq.

1500 John F. Kennedy Blvd., Suite 220

Philadelphia, PA 19102

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Answered on 9/30/12, 5:56 pm
Solomon Weinstein Solomon Weinstein, Esquire

case such as these without written contract are very complex and depend on a variety of matters, course of dealing, These case are very fact sensitive. i suggest you speak with a lawyer as soon as possible to get a more detailed analysis of your matter. if you would like to discuss the matter with me then call my office. at 215 322-2100

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Answered on 10/02/12, 1:14 pm


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