shop4patents Blog

From: doug Sherman
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 10:44 AM
To: Tucci, Elizabeth
Subject:
Hi my name is Doug Sherman can you tell me if any money has been collected from PTI yet
Thanks Doug

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By Dave S.: “For Release: September 6, 2007″:

Invention Promotion Swindlers Ordered to Pay $60 Million in Scheme that Defrauded 17,000 Consumers
The operators of an invention promotion business, which a judge called “one grand con game to take money away from consumers,” have been ordered to pay $60 million for violating a 1998 court order.

“By changing the name of their company, these individuals thought they could continue to make false promises and take inventors’ money, but they didn’t get away with it,” said Lydia Parnes, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “This scam should also remind inventors to question the assurances of promotion firms. No one can guarantee an invention’s commercial success.”

Under the 1998 order, Julian Gumpel, Darrell Mormando, Michael Fleisher, and Greg Wilson were barred from misrepresenting the services they offered to amateur inventors, but they revived their scam under a new name, the Patent & Trademark Institute (PTI). For a fee of $895 to $1,295, PTI promised to evaluate the marketability and patentability of inventors’ ideas, but its evaluations were almost always positive and were not meaningful, according to the FTC. For a fee of $5,000 to $45,000, PTI’s clients were offered legal protection and assistance to obtain commercial licenses for their inventions. They also were told that PTI would help them earn substantial royalties from their inventions, but PTI did not help consumers license their inventions, and clients did not earn royalties. (more…)

We wanted to alert you of an email scam which one of our customers received. Jim Hasci, who’s DC-AC Soft-Switching Inverter received a scam email. We thank him for warning us about it so we can warn you. When reading any unsolicited email you may receive from any source, please be cautious. Its almost always too good to be true. Here is his email to us:

Dear Sirs,

I have a patent listed for sale on your website and it is the only listing I have anywhere for the sale of the patent. I have been contacted by a Dr. Lin Sai from the United Arab Emirates who is shipping, real estate, and manufacturing who wants to purchase my patent outright for a sum of $35 million dollars. Morover, he wants to ship the cash via diplomat attache to my home base in the USA and he wants to keep the deal discreet (no attorney or proxy involvement). This is obviously a hook routine to a Nigerian-type money transfer scheme and the inventors on your website are being targeted! You need to inform them as loudly as possible to these fraudulent attempts at bilking money from them. The specifics of each scheme may vary, but if they contacted me, then I’m sure there are other gullible inventors that will surely fall for their devious and dishonest plots.

Sincerely,

Jim Hacsi
DC-AC Soft-Switching Inverter

Inventors, be careful: One of our inventors who is posting his invention on our site - www.shop4patents.com wrote us the following note:
“Dear Sirs,
I have a patent listed for sale on your website and it is the only listing I have anywhere for the sale of the patent. I have been contacted by a Dr. Lin Sai from the United Arab Emirates who is supposedly in shipping, real estate, and manufacturing who wants to purchase my patent outright for a sum of $35 million dollars. Moreover, he wants to ship the cash via diplomat attaché to my home base in the USA and he wants to keep the deal discreet (no attorney or proxy involvement). This is obviously a hook routine to a Nigerian-type money transfer scheme and the inventors on your website are being targeted! You need to inform them as loudly as possible to these fraudulent attempts at bilking money from them. The specifics of each scheme may vary, but if they contacted me, then I’m sure there are other gullible inventors that will surely fall for their devious and dishonest plots.
Sincerely,
Inventor (Name is kept on our file).

Hello to our Inventors:

We at PatentHelpBlog.com read your comments from this post about the “experiences” you had with PTI, and decided to become more involved and do our best to assist.

As a first step, in order to be more organized and more efficient we suggest moving ahead as a “group” of inventors and combine our efforts.

We suggest you all email us your basic contact information: Name, email, phone#, address and brief description about your “case”. This info will be presented to a lawyer (and in case requested also to the New York Attorney General), who will advise you on what should be the next step/move.

Please email us above mentioned info and any other idea you might have on how you suggest we proceed on this matter.

Email Dan at blog@shop4patents.com

This was a comment from a previous post about the Patent and Trademark Institute that we thought was important to answer as its own post:

Q: “Patent and Trademark Institute is being investigated by the New York Attorney General’s Office …”
AFTER READING THESE COMPLAINTS, I AM SO GLAD THAT I DIDN’T
FOLLOW THROUGH WITH DAVISONS! DOES ANYBODY KNOW OF ANY LEGIT COMPANYS TO GO THROUGH? I HAVE A GREAT IDEA THAT I AM DYING TO PATENT. ANY SUGGESTIONS?

A: You should look at the web site inventored.org to see if an invention promotion company has any complaints against them. You should also do an Internet search on the company before sending them any money. Also, it is best to have a United States utility patent application on file before talking to anybody interested in either buying or licensing your idea. You should contact the Law Office of Steven B. Leavitt, L.L.P. at 941-331-4343 for a free 4-point patentability analysis to see if your idea is patentable.

This is just a general summary and it would be best if you discussed the issue with a registered patent attorney. Please be advised that I do not know the details of any particular situation you may have,and am just discussing the general state of the law.

Q: I have been working with Davison to develop my invention.
They did not create a product that solves the problem as I relayed it to them. I asked that they send me the product before they presented it to a manufacturer, but they did not and the manufacturer was not interested (understandably since the prototype they made was a something a first grader could have made. Now they want additional money to make the product that I invented. What should I do? If you think you can help, please call me on: (kept on file) or let me know either way please so I can seek other avenues if you can’t help. Thanks!

A: You should look at the web site inventored.org about Davison in addition to doing an Internet search on complaints against Davison.
Also, you should have had a United States utility patent application on file before you speak to any invention promotion company.

This is just a general summary and it would be best if you discussed the issue with a registered patent attorney. Please be advised that I do not know the details of any particular situation you may have, and am just discussing the general state of the law. Nothing in this response is meant as legal advice and should not be
taken as such and no legal opinions or advice have been expressed.

Unless otherwise noted, no attorney-client relationship exists between any attorney at the Law Office of Steven B. Leavitt and any reader of this information. If you have legal questions specific to your individual needs, then you should consult with an attorney or other qualified legal professional.

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On Friday morning May 19th, on Good Morning America, there was a report that Patent and Trademark Institute (also known as PTI) of Roslyn Heights, N.Y., is being investigated by the New York Attorney General’s Office for possible misrepresentation of its services to inventors and for implying inventors will be successful by hiring PTI. When asked for the name of one inventor who made a profit on his invention because of PTI, the president of the company, Julian Gumpel, said he would have to do a great deal of research to get the information. The company’s web site is www.inventorshelpline.com.

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