Our mission was to locate the owner of a 25 year old patent to determine the current status of the invention. We were given the last known address of the owner, which yielded that the address had new residents with no forwarding information, that the telephone number had been reassigned, and that the neighbors had no idea of whom were we talking about. The patent holder's name was unusual enough that we checked on-line genealogy sites and found a man with the same name living in the same general region of the country as the outdated address for our guy. There was also a listing of this man's family members. Since there were no clues on the genealogy site regarding this man's location or background (other than he enjoyed snow skiing), our investigative staff tracked down one of the listed family members who turned out to be the patent owner's son. We persuaded the son (an adult) to give us his dad's phone number (non-published and in another state), called the patent owner and learned that he had never sold his invention, never developed it, and we relayed his blessings to whomever wanted to now "make a go at it".