You’ve no doubt been exposed to the ads for various inventor services; you have an idea, and they want to help you commercialize it and get the money you deserve. Whether it’s helping you file legal paperwork, defending your idea, developing it into a product, or selling it, there’s a company out there that wants to help. So which ones are legit, which ones are scams, and what do you really need to make your millions?

In 1999, the US passed the American Inventors Protection Act, acknowledging that the vast majority of inventor services companies were ineffective or fraudulent, and putting in place reporting requirements that ensure people are well informed when engaging with these companies. They are required to disclose how many inventions they’ve evaluated and accepted, their total number of clients, the number that have received a net profit after their expenses to the company, and their licensing success rate. Go to any inventor services web site and look for their numbers. After an extensive search, though, we only found a couple that actually listed the data, and it wasn’t good.

The biggest takeaway of this article should be this; as an entrepreneur you have limited resources available, and nearly unlimited ways to spend them. You should choose to spend those resources only on the things that will get you to the next step, not things that are way out in the future, and not on things that you can do yourself. Don’t pay for a fancy trade show booth if you don’t have a product to show. Don’t pay someone to develop a proof of concept if you can hack something together with an Arduino and cardboard. Be absolutely certain you know what you’re getting for your money, and that you need it in order to get where you want to go.

Patents and Trademarks

Every time I’ve gotten a trademark or patent, I’ve discovered that it was issued when the flood of advertisements came in. A few weeks later, the USPTO delivers official notice, along with a flyer warning of official-looking scams that try to solicit my money. If you decide to register a trademark, you get the benefit of using the R symbol instead of the TM symbol. Nice, but make sure it adds value to the business.

The solicitors will be of two varieties; those wanting you to register for their special listing service, and those wanting you to buy their trademark maintenance services. The former means that you would give them a large sum of money, and they put your trademark in their database. Their database isn’t really used for anything, and you don’t get any additional protection by paying for inclusion; it’s just a way to give someone else your money.

The other solicitation is mildly valuable; they’ll monitor new applications for similarity to yours, then …read more

Source:: Hackaday