Avoiding Invent Help & Other Invention Scams

QUESTION: Hello, I stumbled upon an article you wrote, thankfully I believe just in time. I had an appointment set for tomorrow at noon with an Invent Help rep but decided to quickly browse google for any information that I had missed. After adding “Scam” to their name, I came up with quite a bit. Including an article you had written. My question to you is, what else can I do to check for existing patents, and obtain a patent on a product? I am new to this inventing world and fell quick to the TV commercials Invent Help had aired. Any information you could provide me to point me in the right direction would be very much appreciated.

ANSWER: I personally would stay away from Invent Help or any of the other invention submission companies. What you want to do is stick with reputable professionals. The invention submission folks lure you in by telling you what you want to hear and by providing woefully inadequate patent searches and then promise to help you market your invention. They never see any inventions that are not worth pursuing. What you want is candid advise, not pipe dreams.

What makes searches provided by  invention submission companies so bad is that they typically only look at the 10 most recent patents in a particular sub-class of invention.  This is not how a serious professional would conduct a patent search and not at all likely to lead to the finding of relevant prior art.  Every patent attorney or agent has a story (or more) about doing a patent search where an invention submission company found nothing. I have several times found close to the exact invention where an invention submission company found no relevant patents, and in one situation I found exactly the same invention, which was patented some 28 years earlier.

Any patent attorney or patent agent can help you with a search. There are also a lot of search firms that you can go to yourself directly that service patent attorneys and patent agents. These search firms frequently do not offer patentability opinions though, but rather provide you with what they have found.  In this case it is up to you to go through what they find and decide what it all means. I have seen some search firms starting to advertise that they offer both searches and patentability opinions for as little as $250. I would be at least somewhat skeptical about such a price. If you go with a low cost solution like this at least make sure that you are hiring a searcher who is a patent attorney or patent agent, likely a patent agent for that price. If you are paying that price to a searcher who is not a patent attorney or patent agent, and they promise an opinion, they are going to have to outsource the opinion, meaning that the $250 is being split between a searcher and an agent or attorney. If that is the case you can hopefully see that neither professional will be spending much time, so any analysis should be taken with a grain of salt.

The trouble with low cost searches is that they are frequently done overseas and the company you contact pays maybe $100 (or less) for them.  The company you contract receives the search, reviews it quickly and then gives you an opinion. That is better than nothing and a legitimate service, but when paying a low price you are likely going to get a search that misses a lot that could be found. This is not to say that everyone that offers such low prices are scammers though.  With searching the reality is that the more time you spend the more you will likely find.  When people have me do a search I get help with the search from one of my employees, retired examiner friends or a patent search firm I trust. Then I look at what they found and spend a couple hours reviewing and considering the search results and the invention. Sometimes I even do a little searching myself to make sure that everything was found that can reasonably be found. Then I opine about patentability.

I am not trying to say bad things about cheap searches if there is a patent agent or patent attorney involved in the process, but less cost means less time and less time means they find less.  So just make sure you realize that when you are paying for a taxi you don’t expect a limousine to show up.  For those just starting out it might be difficult at times to know whether you are getting a taxi or a limousine.  One tell tale sign is after the fact.  If you get a search back with patents that are not at all relevant to your invention you have just been taken for a ride, and it probably wasn’t even a taxi, if you know what I mean.  It would be virtually impossible for any reputable patent search to yield no relevant patents.  I explain this in more detail in No Prior Art for My Invention.  The only exception may be in the area of software where many innovations are not patented.  Even then you ought to be able to find something.

What I always tell inventors is that you should search yourself first, but be careful relying on your search alone. Just because you don’t find something doesn’t mean there is nothing that can be found. Take a look at my quick search tutorial Patent Searching 101.  If you find something then you save money perhaps, but at least you start to get an idea about what is out there and maybe some ideas as well.

I would also recommend you take a look our Inventing Page.  Reading Assignment 1 (there are 4 assignments) has a lot of good information about starting, such as how to start on a limited budget and the top 5 things inventors do wrong.  With respect to moving forward toward a patent if after searching things look good, I am a big fan of provisional patent applications, and I have created a unique process I call the Invent & Patent System, which allows inventors to create their own provisional patent applications. 

If I can be of any service let me know.

Good luck!

Eugene R. Quinn, Jr. US Patent Attorney (Reg. No. 44,294) 932 Edwards Ferry Road #109 Leesburg, VA 20176 Send me an e-mail B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Rutgers University J.D. & LL.M. Franklin Pierce Law Center