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Wealth of Ideas, April 2004
Anything worth doing is worth doing right, and that
certainly applies when developing and promoting an invention.
Unfortunately, some inventors have found this out the
hard way – by becoming victims of inventor fraud.
For example, in September 2001, the three top executives
at American Inventors Corporation (AIC) were sentenced
to jail time and hefty fines for swindling about 34,000
inventors out of more than $58 million dollars over
a 20-year period. (Ironically, AIC was formed after
its founder’s former employer, Imperial Inventors
of Chicago, was itself shut down for fraudulent activity
in September 1973.)
How can you know whom to trust? For starters, most
legitimate companies (though we wouldn’t say all)
do not advertise exclusively in the back of supermarket
tabloids. Also, inventor protection groups have been
formed, such as the National Inventor Fraud Center and the United Inventors Association,
both of which keep inventors updated about fraud. Plus,
the US Patent and Trademark office is taking an active
role this month [April 2004] with an online tutorial on inventor
scams on April 29th, and offers a downloadable scam
prevention brochure on its website, www.uspto.gov.
In general, if a company is not a law firm and wants
to charge thousands of dollars up front for invention
promotion services, consider heading for the
nearest exit.
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