Quote From: skoobus My story. I had an idea for a consumer product. A friend forwarded an email he received from an online company that supposedly gets an inventors products licensed and brought to market.
I sent them (via online form at their website) my idea. They charged me $690 and I fell for it at first.
What I received from them was a notebook with mostly pre produced material (which is like advertisements for their company) and some patents on this type of product.
One of these patents was "exactly" what I conceived and sent to this company. The rep that I was talking to on the phone told me that all we had to do is to change the product by 10 pct and it would be patentable.
I don't know of any way to change the product. I told him it would be patent infringement, but he tried to convince me that it wasn't. I eventually told him I wanted to drop the idea because he told me I would have to send them more of my money. After I originally applied, I did a search online and found the company had been sued by the FTC for non disclosure and other reasons. I didn't get $690 worth of work done by them and feel cheated. It looks like their patent search was done online via Google. I also got a letter from them saying, since I don't want to procede, their commitment to the project would be null and void. It also said that if someone else submitted the same idea, they were free to act on it.
I did another search about the company and their are many complaints about them on ripoffreport.com.
There are other companies that do the same thing and I advise you to do the research on them before you send them anything.
