Article

Can a closed company license its records?

By TrustPast

Published October 27, 2026 · Updated November 1, 2026

The company has closed. The trucks are sold, the lease is handed back, the state filing is done or about to be. But the records are still somewhere: on a server in the former owner’s garage, in boxes in a storage unit, in a cloud account that still charges a card every month. This page sets out what official pages say about the two questions that follow: can records like these still be licensed, and who gets to decide?

Here is the frame for everything below. We, TrustPast, are not lawyers, and nothing on this page is legal advice. We quote what official pages say and credit them. Where the answer turns on your company’s facts, we say so, and the right next step is the same each time: ask a lawyer about your own case.

What a buyer wants from these records doesn’t change when the doors close. Our cornerstone page on what data buyers want from a trade business sets it out file by file. Records are de-identified before use. Customer names and payments are never what is wanted. What is wanted is how the work was done: how an estimate became a job, how a change order was settled, how a repair was diagnosed.

The short answer

micro1 publishes a card for exactly this case: the Defunct Company Data Partnership. Its line reads: “We are acquiring data from companies that are no longer operating.”

Who decides is the harder part. It may not be whoever has the files. It depends on how the company closed. A company still in a formal wind-down, a company that sold its assets, and a company in a Chapter 7 case may each put the decision in different hands. The state matters. So do the papers the company signed on the way out.

So the honest answer has two halves. The records, the buyer and the demand are real. The person who can sign for them is a question for a lawyer, before anyone applies.

Apply & License Your Data

The records usually outlive the company

Closing a company ends the business. It rarely ends the files. In our experience, they end up in one of three places.

A former owner’s drive. The office server went home with the owner when the lease ended. Or someone copied the shared drive to a USB disk on the last afternoon. A plumbing contractor’s fifteen years of job files can fit on one disk in a desk drawer.

A storage unit. Paper never goes away on its own. Filing cabinets of signed estimates, carbon-copy tickets and inspection sheets get moved to a rented unit and paid for by the month. Sometimes the old office computers go there too, with the hard drives still in them.

A cloud account still billing. The mailboxes, the field-service software, the accounting system and the shared drive were all subscriptions. Some got cancelled in the last week. Others are still running, because the card on file was the owner’s personal card, or nobody had the login to cancel them.

Each of those is a record of how a trade was run. The disk holds the work orders. The boxes hold the paper estimates from before the software. The cloud account holds the email where each change order was argued out. Our page on job files and work orders explains what a job file shows. Our page on email archives explains why the threads matter more than the attachments.

Our page on closed companies covers how records get lost in a wind-down and which ones count. None of this is gone. That is the good news. The rest of this page is about who gets to say what happens to it.

Holding the files is not the same as holding the say

Owners often assume that whoever has the disk has the right to license what is on it. As our own reading, those are two separate questions. Physical possession answers where the files are. It doesn’t answer who may sign a licence for them.

Here is why it matters in practice. A licence is an agreement. micro1’s second step is “Contracting”, where it says it establishes “clear licensing terms.” Somebody has to sign those terms for the company. As our own advice, find out who has that authority before you put any time into an application.

Three situations come up again and again. The company is dissolved and winding up. The company sold its assets and then closed. The company is in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case. Each has its own official source, and we take them in turn. None of them replaces a lawyer reading your papers.

What one state’s law says about a dissolved corporation

States write their own rules for what happens after a company dissolves. We quote one state here, Delaware, because its code is published in full on the state’s own site. Your company may be formed somewhere else, under different words. Read this as an example of the kind of rule that exists, not as the rule for you.

A corporation carries on to wind up. Delaware Code Title 8, §278 says that dissolved corporations “shall nevertheless be continued, for the term of 3 years from such expiration or dissolution or for such longer period as the Court of Chancery shall in its discretion direct.” The section says what for: “enabling them gradually to settle and close their business, to dispose of and convey their property, to discharge their liabilities and to distribute to their stockholders any remaining assets.” It adds a limit: “but not for the purpose of continuing the business for which the corporation was organized.”

A court can put someone in charge. §279 says that when a corporation is dissolved, the Court of Chancery, on application of “any creditor, stockholder or director of the corporation, or any other person who shows good cause therefor,” may appoint directors as trustees or other persons as receivers. Those trustees or receivers are “to take charge of the corporation’s property.”

An LLC has its own section. A trade business may be a limited liability company, not a corporation. Delaware Code Title 6, §18-803 says that, unless the company’s agreement provides otherwise, “a manager who has not wrongfully dissolved a limited liability company or, if none, the members or a person approved by the members, in either case, by members who own more than 50 percent of the then current percentage or other interest in the profits of the limited liability company owned by all of the members” may wind up its affairs. It adds that the Court of Chancery may wind up the company’s affairs and appoint a liquidating trustee, and that an LLC formed on or before July 31, 2015 is governed by this subsection as it stood on July 31, 2015, unless its agreement says otherwise. Until the certificate of cancellation is filed, it says, those persons may “dispose of and convey the limited liability company’s property” in the company’s name.

That is what the law says, in Delaware, in those sections. It doesn’t say whether company records count as property under them, and we won’t say it either. It doesn’t say whether three years have already run for your company, or whether a court has stepped in. Those are the facts a lawyer works from. Your case is for a lawyer.

As our own reading, the sections do tell an owner which questions to bring. Where was the company formed? When did it dissolve? Was it a corporation or an LLC? Who was named to wind it up, if anyone? Has a court appointed a trustee or a receiver?

Our page on who can sign for a dissolved company takes each of those people in turn, with the papers to have ready.

When the company sold its assets first

Many trade companies don’t simply stop. They sell the trucks, the equipment, the phone number and the customer list to a competitor, then dissolve what is left. The records can get caught up in that sale without anyone thinking about them.

We can’t tell you what any sale agreement transferred. We haven’t read yours, and the words vary. As our own advice, here is what to look for before you assume the records are still the company’s, or yours.

Whether the agreement lists books and records, files, data or software among the assets sold.
Whether the buyer took over the field-service account, the email domain or the shared drive.
Whether the seller kept copies, and whether the agreement says anything about copies.
Whether any promise of confidentiality to the buyer covers the records.

A heating and cooling company that sold its service agreements and its phone number to a larger firm is a common case. The service agreements may have carried the customer history with them. The buyer may hold the live account. A former owner may hold a backup from a year earlier. Both copies show the same jobs. Which one, if either, can be licensed, and by whom, depends on what the sale papers say. That reading belongs to a lawyer.

Our page on what a closing company’s records are worth covers a company sold in pieces from the money side. This page only adds the warning: a sale may have moved the say over the records, even if nobody meant it to.

When a trustee controls the company’s assets

A company that files under Chapter 7 is in a different position. The federal courts publish a plain page on how Chapter 7 works. We quote it here and add nothing to the law.

The page opens with what the chapter is: it “provides for “liquidation” - the sale of a debtor’s nonexempt property and the distribution of the proceeds to creditors.” It says a debtor can be “an individual, a partnership, or a corporation or other business entity.”

On who takes charge, it says: “When a chapter 7 petition is filed, the U.S. trustee (or the bankruptcy court in Alabama and North Carolina) appoints an impartial case trustee to administer the case and liquidate the debtor’s nonexempt assets.”

On what the trustee does, it says: “The primary role of a chapter 7 trustee in an asset case is to liquidate the debtor’s nonexempt assets in a manner that maximizes the return to the debtor’s unsecured creditors.” It adds that “if the debtor is a business, the bankruptcy court may authorize the trustee to operate the business for a limited period of time, if such operation will benefit creditors and enhance the liquidation of the estate.”

And on the debtor’s side, it says: “It is important for the debtor to cooperate with the trustee and to provide any financial records or documents that the trustee requests.”

The page doesn’t mention licensing records. It doesn’t say whether a company’s files are an asset the trustee could license or sell. We won’t fill that gap. As our own advice, if the company is in a Chapter 7 case, or about to file, don’t offer its records to a buyer. Tell the lawyer handling the case that the records exist and that a buyer licenses records like them. Then let the lawyer, and the trustee once there is one, decide what happens next.

One practical point, also ours. A former owner holding a disk from a company in Chapter 7 shouldn’t wipe it or sell it. Keep the copy intact and tell the lawyer handling the case that it exists. Public companies report a bankruptcy or receivership to the SEC, and our count of SEC deregistrations and bankruptcy filings counts the ones in our database since 2020.

What micro1 publishes about companies that have closed

micro1’s referral page lists two kinds of partnership. The second is the Defunct Company Data Partnership: “We are acquiring data from companies that are no longer operating.” The requirements listed on that card include “30+ employees”, “English” and “All industries.” Company compensation on the card is “$100K-$2M+ for approved data packages” (indicative, not an offer).

That is as far as micro1’s pages go on closed companies. They don’t say who must sign for one. They don’t mention dissolution, asset sales or bankruptcy. We won’t add words to theirs.

A few lines on its other pages bear on the question all the same.

It reviews every company. “All companies must complete micro1’s qualification and evaluation process.” Its process step four reads: “Our team reviews the company and determines whether it’s a fit for a data partnership.”

Legal requirements affect the timeline. “Timelines vary depending on the company’s eligibility, the complexity of its data, legal requirements, and how quickly it completes each step.” As our own reading, a closed company’s authority question is one of those legal requirements, and it is better settled before the call than during it.

Price depends on access and diligence. Its payout page says: “Final payout is determined based on data sources, volume, quality, access terms, and due diligence.” Access terms and due diligence, in our reading, are where a buyer checks that the person licensing the records can do so.

The company keeps ownership. “Companies retain ownership of their underlying data.” It describes the arrangement as a licence: “We license data generated through your company’s everyday operations.” For a closed company, as our own reading, that sentence assumes there is someone who speaks for the company. Finding that someone comes first.

Who counts toward the 30 for a closed company, and why our estimate uses the peak, is on our page on whether you need 30 employees.

What to keep before a cloud account lapses

While the lawyer works out who decides, the records have a clock of their own. Paper in a dry unit keeps for years. A disk in a drawer keeps, if nobody reuses it. A cloud account doesn’t wait.

Microsoft publishes what happens when a business subscription ends. For most offers, it says, a subscription moves from Active to Expired, then to Disabled, then to Deleted. The Expired stage lasts 30 days and the Disabled stage 90 days. Microsoft adds that since February 9, 2026, license-based subscriptions bought directly under a Microsoft Customer Agreement skip the Expired stage, and a monthly subscription cancelled within its cancellation window goes straight to Disabled. In Disabled, its table says data “is accessible to admins only.” In Deleted, “Data is deleted.” It also says: “If you explicitly delete a subscription, it skips the Expired and Disabled statuses” and SharePoint and OneDrive content “is immediately deleted.” After a cancellation, customer data left behind “will be deleted no later than 180 days after cancellation.”

So the real deadline is often not the closing date. It is the day the subscription ends, or the day someone deletes it. A company that still has to file a WARN notice can plan the exports around it, as set out on what to do with your records when a WARN notice is coming.

Here is what to keep, as our own advice, before any account lapses. This list is about proof and control, not about the export order. That order, system by system, is on our closing company page.

The admin login. Write down which account is the top administrator and who knows the password. If that person has left, find out now how to recover it while the account is still active.
The billing record. Keep the invoices that show which entity paid for the account and from which card. When a lawyer asks whose account it is, the bills are the first answer.
A list of what each account holds. System, years, rough size, and which roles used it. One page is enough.
A full export, kept unchanged apart from anything a client owns under its contract, which stays out. Download it, check that it opens, and store it somewhere the right person controls. Don’t edit, merge or prune the rest.
A note of who holds copies. The former owner’s disk, the buyer of the assets, the bookkeeper, the storage unit. Copies spread fast in a closing. Knowing where they all are helps whoever ends up deciding.

Keeping the records is not the same as licensing them. It just keeps the choice open until the right person can make it. Paying for the seats another quarter costs less than a lost mailbox.

Questions to bring to a lawyer

A lawyer’s hour goes further with a short brief. These are the questions we would bring, as our own list. They are questions, not answers.

How did the company close: dissolution, a sale of assets, a bankruptcy case, or simply stopping?
In which state was it formed, and was it a corporation or an LLC?
When did it dissolve, and has any period to wind up already ended?
Who, if anyone, was named to wind up its affairs, or appointed by a court?
Did any sale agreement mention books, records, files or data?
Is a bankruptcy case open, and has a trustee been appointed?
Who holds copies of the records today, and on whose equipment or account?
Do any customer or client contracts restrict how the records may be used?

Bring the inventory from the section above. The last question links to the wider checks on our page on whether licensing company records is legal, which covers customers, vendors, staff and regulated data. That page applies to a closed company too. This page only adds the step before it: who signs.

What this means for a closed trade company

Take an HVAC and plumbing company with 40 people at its peak, formed as an LLC, closed after sixteen years. This picture is ours, not a case micro1 publishes.

Where the records are. The field-service software account, still active because the owner’s card is on it. Two former estimators’ mailboxes in a business email account that nobody cancelled. A server in the former owner’s basement with the job files from the first six years. Eleven boxes of paper tickets in a storage unit.

What the records show. Work orders from the first call to the last return visit. Estimates with every revision and the email where the price moved. Change orders on commercial jobs, and how each was settled. Service histories on the buildings the company maintained, visit by visit, with the diagnosis on each one.

What the former owner does first. Keeps every account alive one more quarter. Writes the one-page inventory. Downloads a full export of each system and checks that it opens. Leaves the server and the boxes as they are. Then books an hour with a lawyer, with the questions above, before touching an application.

What the lawyer settles. Who can sign for the LLC now. Whether the sale of the service contracts to another firm moved any of the records. Whether any client contract keeps certain jobs out.

Only then does the owner run our estimate with the peak headcount and the years the records actually cover. The range is ours, not an offer.

What is never included

micro1’s pages say that personal and identifying information “is removed or transformed before your data is shared with third parties,” and that “Personally identifiable information (PII) is removed when relevant.” Asked whether a company must anonymize its data first, micro1 answers: “No, micro1 has processes for de-identifying and transforming sensitive information.” micro1 doesn’t publish a list of records it excludes.

What follows is our own advice, not micro1’s. Keep these out unless micro1 agrees otherwise in writing and your lawyer is satisfied: attorney-client privileged records, health information, payment-card and financial-account details, Social Security numbers, minors’ data, biometric data, and classified or export-controlled material.

A closed company adds three of its own, also as our advice. The legal files on the closing itself: the dissolution papers, the sale agreement, anything from a bankruptcy case. Payroll and final-pay records for the last staff. And anything a client owns under its contract with you. Keep all of those as your lawyer and accountant advise; just keep them out of scope.

Our page on what is never included shows where those records tend to hide. Our How it’s safe page gives the short version of the protections.

Where we fit

We, TrustPast, explain how this works and give you a range with our estimate. You apply to micro1 yourself, through the button below. micro1 pays us a referral fee. You pay us nothing. We never hold your records, we don’t decide who signs for a closed company, and nothing on this page is legal advice. For that, ask a lawyer about your own case.

TrustPast

Questions and answers

Does micro1 take records from a company that has closed?

micro1’s referral page has a separate card, the Defunct Company Data Partnership: “We are acquiring data from companies that are no longer operating.” It lists “30+ employees” and “English” among the requirements. It also says “All companies must complete micro1's qualification and evaluation process.” micro1 decides at application.

Who decides whether a dissolved company’s records can be licensed?

It depends on how the company closed, the state, and the papers it signed. Delaware’s code, for one, continues a dissolved corporation for three years, or longer if the Court of Chancery directs, to settle its business and “dispose of and convey their property.” Whether that or anything like it covers your company is a question for a lawyer. Ask a lawyer about your own case.

What if the company is in Chapter 7?

The federal courts’ own page says a case trustee is appointed “to administer the case and liquidate the debtor's nonexempt assets.” As our own advice, if the company is in a Chapter 7 case, don’t offer its records to a buyer. Keep them intact, tell the lawyer handling the case they exist, and let the lawyer, and the trustee once there is one, decide what happens next.

I still have the old server in my garage. Does that make the records mine to license?

Not by itself, as our own reading. Having the files and having the right to license them are two separate questions. Who holds the right depends on how the company closed and what was signed. Keep the server safe and dry, and ask a lawyer about your own case before you apply.

What should we keep before the old cloud account lapses?

As our own advice: the admin login, the billing record, a list of what each account holds, and a full export. Microsoft says a business subscription that ends moves through Expired and Disabled before its data is deleted, about 30 and then 90 days for most offers, and for some subscriptions bought directly from Microsoft only the 90.