Inventors Beware!
Invention companies are in the business of helping inventors get their inventions marketed. They act as an agent for inventors by submitting their inventions to manufacturing/marketing companies, who may consider entering into a "License Agreement" with the inventor. Should the invention company accomplish this for an inventor, they will either receive a percentage of the inventor's royalties, be paid a fee by the inventor, or both.
While there are honest and reputable invention companies available to inventors, there are also ones who simply scam inventors out of fees and do not perform the services they claim they do. I am an inventor who was scammed by an Invention Company out of nearly $5,000 before successfully marketing my inventions on my own.
Even the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has information on their website about scam invention companies and they actually offer a forum for inventors to publicly register their complaints against invention companies who have scammed them.
In the steps below, you will find suggestions on how to guard against being scammed by dishonest invention companies.
- Find out which invention companies are on a "watch list". There are many inventor information sources out there that help inventors avoid companies that have a reputation for scamming their clients. Simply use the search terms; "invention company scams", "invention promotion fraud" and "bogus invention promotion" on a search engine. Your search results will yield a great deal of information on how to watch out for these types of companies and many of these websites actually list the dishonest companies by name....
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Author: James Lowrance