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  The Society for Consumer Advocates and Mavens

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INVENTION AND PATENT PROMOTERS

Promoters may claim your idea(s) has solid promise just to entice you to pay their required hefty upfront fees to patent and/or market your idea! Their assistance in this effort may sometimes be highly questionable because the patent protection you receive from them may not really afford you much, if any, legal protection! Why?

Just because your invention is patentable there is no valid or reliable measure of future commercial success. A legal patent does not mean protection and only provides limited legal protection because it is relatively easy for a competitor to possibly find ways to "design around" any real legal patent protection! Also, foreign nations too often do not even recognize U.S. patent protection. In fact, foreign exchange students have even been caught taking product ideas back to their homeland and manufacturing them there with no royalties going to the American inventor or U.S. manufacturer! For example, computer products have been especially hard hit this way in the Far East! Consequently, registering your patent with the U.S. government provides no exclusive patent protection.

"Reputable" invention and patent promoters do not charge high fees in advance of services but only make their money collecting royalties AFTER your product is a success. Of course, there is never a guarantee of success despite what a promoter may incinuate.

Moreover, just because a promoter takes on your particular project does not mean he will ever admit to already greedily taking on similar projects and has simply neglected to tell you something similar has already been invented and patented.

Never ever trust some big company or manufacturer with your ideas for new products or services without first getting them to sign a "confidential disclosure agreement" to be approved by your attorney, NOT their attorney! This agreement shows they are serious about compensating you for your ideas if the product or service becomes marketable.

Remember, some of the biggest, money-making ideas and their inventors never made a dime off their big inventions because they trusted some big company to help them market their invention and the big companies ended up marketing the "stolen" invention ideas for themselves and never paid the real inventors a dime!

If you do get something in writing, whoever you are dealing with, conceivably, cannot be trusted! Even if you do sue them in court for money damages, it may take you up to 25 years to even win a lawsuit and collect! Few attorneys will take on this type lawsuit and few inventors can sustain the legal costs involved in a court battle, especially when going up against giant corporate conglomertes.

If the big company representative "comes on" and acts like he is your best friend and always tells you not to worry and that you will be taken care of, this may be all the more reason to be suspicious, especially if you have nothing in writing from the corporate giant. Remember, big corporations tend to be ruthless when it comes to doing business. How do you think some of them became corporate giants....by being nice guys?

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCES: MIAMI HERALD NEWSPAPER 8/25/97 and ABC-TV 20/20 10/30/97

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