Check with the Better Business Bureau?

I plan to.  I'd like to get some feedback from people who actually had experience with them.

Good and evil: wrap them up and disguise it as people.

As the old Hungarian adage said: The bride is too beautyful...

<nbucska@pcperipherals.com>

Well that's a novel way of deciding fitness for purpose! If a highly qualified and experienced person pays $10 and a total numb-nuts pays $50 then the numb-nuts gets the job!

As a business plan it sure looks like a winner (for the organisers)

Good Luck
johnwm

I agree, johnwm.  They may have had me right away with a flat fee, but the staggered "preference level" thing sounds fishy.  Still, it would be nice to hear from someone who jas been there.

I checked the Better Business Bureau website, and they got nothing.

Good and evil: wrap them up and disguise it as people.

Yep, it looks pretty sketchy. "Pay us to teach you how to have good ideas and then pay us to tell you if your ideas are any good." Hmm, I wish I'd thought of it.

Hi

Looks like one of those late night TV comercials about invention submission gimmicks.  That is a total rip off industry.  It is not hard to go to the uspto web site and figure out the patent process.  Besides they have no more knowledge if something is going to work than the person who invented the idea.

As far as marketing synopsis about a product  Drake University in Des Moines Iowa has a program set up (yes its a pay for service deal)that marketing students do an analasis to measure most anything you want about your product.  I could make a grocery list of what is included.  I suggest any one interested needs to contact them (my contact information is more than 10 yrs old)and see what they can do for you.

I've definitely decided not to send any money their way.  Besides, I'm finding enough work on my own.

Thanks for the input, all.

"Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings."--C. D. Jackson

I've done a lot of work for inventors who use similar services (although I've not had any feedback on this particular group).

My advice is to be very careful.  You take all the risk--they take none.  You risk losing your idea and perhaps losing plenty of money.  Generally, if you need to pay anything up front, look out for a rip off.  Not that no services are provided, but that the services are directly useful for nothing.

For example, I once had a client that forked over $15,000 and an extended period of time for some "invention consulting".  What they got in return were some inconclusive focus-group-like studies, some mediocre concept drawings (obviously not done by industrial designers), and a steep bill.  No prototypes, no patent, no tooling--nothing of worth.  Many of these companies don't know what it truly takes to get a product on a shelf and keep it there.

If you go with someone offering invention services, make sure you get something tangible as part of the contract and that you pay nothing, except out of income earned by the final product on the shelf.  That way, you'll have a patent, a developed product, and income--from which you'll pay the invention helpers after they've done their work.

I've been able to get about 30 product designs on the shelf working with a local invention/development house who uses the principles above when working with "outside" inventors.  The inventor pays nothing unless the product makes something of itself, so the risk goes to the particular development house and not the inventor.  Look around--many reputable companies aren't so flashy--they just do their work well.

Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC
http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com