Did your father publish the research and try to keep the hardware test environment secret? If not, and the research was proprietary for companies, that is messed up. Otherwise, graduate students leaving and taking their work with them, as well as experiences and knowledge from the research they provided during their time as students is pretty par for the course. It's a two way street, your father provided funding, the student provided labor in return for education. After you're done, you don't just leave that research in your adviser's lab, you often build on it at either a postdoc or professorship, in return for citations and a working relationship.