How do you Contact Large Corporations?

Question

I would love to get some advice around this. We are a 4 people company, rather small and we want to acquire a defunct business unit for a large corporation (think IBM, GE, etc).I've thought about a few options:1) Write a letter to their corporate address2) Call their corporate office3) Get an M&A attorney and have them contact their legal councel.4) Find someone from the executive office or VP on LinkedIn, stalk them and get their attention.We want buy the rights to their IP which is no longer been used for over 20 years. We'd first like to investigate if they possess documentation and the relevant code/diagrams/drawings/blueprints for the IP and then put an offer on the table.Thank you very much and I hope it also helps others who are in the similar situation.

hindsightbias · Accepted Answer

Unlikely after 20 years if truly defunct that they’re going to have retained a lot, best case code or stuff in iron mountain somewhere.
Would try to id anyone who worked on it at the time and then find them. Press releases, article quotes etc. They might know what went where or may still work there.
https://www.ibm.com/legal/licensing https://www.ge.com/licensing

fortran77 · Answer

I'd have an attorney make the contact and broker the deal. But there's no harm in calling the cooperate office first and see if there's someone you can talk to.