September 07, 2007

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced on Thursday that a $60 million court judgment was assessed against the Patent and Trademark Institute (“PTI”), an invention promotion company, for defrauding approximately 17,000 consumers. According to the Newsday.com article (link below), PTI “promised consumers it would screen their ideas before taking fees,” but that “nearly all ideas made it through the screening process.” PTI, based in Garden City, New York, was ordered by the FTC in 1998 to alert future PTI customers that no prior customer has ever made the amount of money back that he or she has paid to PTI for their services. The $60M judgment, ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia based upon violations of the 1998 order, resulted in part from a large number of consumer protection complaints received since the 1998 order. According to the FTC Press Release (link below), “For a fee of $5,000 to $45,000, PTI’s clients were offered legal protection and assistance to obtain commercial licenses for their inventions. They also were told that PTI would help them earn substantial royalties from their inventions, but PTI did not help consumers license their inventions, and clients did not earn royalties.” Several other companies operated through PTI, including Azure Communications Inc., London Communications Inc. and United Licensing Corp, International Patent Advisors Inc., Datatech Consulting Inc., International Marketing Inc. and Unicorp Consulting Inc., were all held in contempt by the Virginia court. The FTC has set up a phone number (available in the FTC link below) for consumers to call if they believe they have been defrauded by PTI.

Newsday.com Article: LINK
FTC Press Release: LINK

0 comments:

Post a Comment

WIPO Press Releases

WIPO General News

Patent References

Click HERE to search issued U.S. Patents

Click HERE to search published U.S. Patent Applications

Click HERE to browse the MPEP (E8r6 in HTML and PDF, and E8r7 in PDF)

Click HERE to search patent assignments recorded with the USPTO

Click HERE to search Title 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations (rev. 7/1/08)

Click HERE to browse Title 35 of the U.S. Code

Click HERE to view current USPTO fees

Disclaimer

Copyright 2006-2010, Mark Reichel. The Daily Dose of IP is my personal website, and I am not providing any legal advice or financial analysis. Any views expressed herein should not be viewed as being the views of my employer, Ice Miller LLP. Any comments submitted to this blog will not be held in confidence and will not be considered as establishing an attorney-client relationship. Information submitted to this blog should be considered as being public information, and the submitter takes full responsibility for any consequences of any information submitted. No claims, promises, or guarantees are made or available regarding the completeness or accuracy of the information contained in this blog or otherwise available by searching from or linking away from this blog.

EPO Updates

Trademark References

Click HERE to search issued and pending U.S. Trademarks

Click HERE to search TTAB proceedings (via TTABVUE)

Click HERE to search trademark assignments recorded with the USPTO

The DDIP Author





Mark Reichel
Reichel IP LLC

I am a patent attorney with Reichel IP LLC, where I concentrate my practice on patent drafting and prosecution, trademarks, and general intellectual property matters. I currently focus on the preparation and prosecution of medical device and other life sciences patent applications, and being actively involved in a number of local not-for-profit organizations.

Click HERE to view my full professional bio at Reichel IP LLC.


Subscribe/Feedback

Click HERE to join the e-mail list for my blog

Click HERE to provide feedback on the DDIP blog

Fellow Blogs/Bloggers

AwakenIP (Kuester)
Counterfeit Chic (Scafidi)
I/P Updates (Heinze)
Internet Cases (Brown)
Likelihood of Confusion (Coleman)
Patent Baristas (Albainy-Jenei)
Patent Docs (Zuhn et al.)
Patently-O (Crouch)
The 271 Patent Blog (Zura)
The Ice Loop (Ice Miller LLP)
The Indiana Law Blog (Oddi)
The Invent Blog (Nipper)
The Patent Prospector (Odom)
The TTABlog (Welch)