COMPLAINT REGARDING INVENTION PROMOTER

Name of the Invention Promotion Company: Invent-Tech

Invention Promoter's Address: 2655 Lejeune Rd., #550, Coral Gables, FL 33134-5844

Complainant's Name: Steven J. Houdek

Complainant's Address: W494 Cindy Ann Lane, Kaukauna, WI 54130

Customer's Name:

WHAT IS YOUR COMPLAINT?

Invention promotion services offered to be performed:

Explanation of complaint between customer and invention promoter:

In April & May of 2003, I contacted Invent-Tech about a product idea I had. My initial inquiry was aggressively followed-up by a sales representative by the name of at .

I was told they would perform all the leg work for me to promote and develop my idea, which indicated was a very good idea and the Invent-Tech team was eager to work with me on the project. He told me that they had engineers and attorneys awaiting my commitment to begin. This indicated that they HAD actual engineers and attorneys on staff.

After an investment of $857 for their "Invention Research and Documentation Proposal", I was first told that no other products like this had been filed. Recently however, in doing a BASIC search on the uspto.gov website, I found the Park Smart Clean Park Parking Mat for sale on several websites. This is essentially an identical product and if Invent-Tech had discovered this in their high priced product search, I would certainly NOT have pursued the idea further. My basic search on parking mat, returned a nearly identical patent D433,660 for an automobile-parking mat. The rest of this report addresses the subsequent pitch they used to get me to buy their services after their incomplete patent research. Other very similar products did indeed exist, but being new to this area of expertise, Invent-Tech used that lack of knowledge and the "fear of loss" angle to persuade me to proceed with their Advanced Development Program.

In my conversations with their sales rep, one area of concern for me was manufacturer leads.

He told me they had literally THOUSANDS of applicable manufacturer leads and I would be sending out many, many intro packages. After had convinced me (through dozens of high pressure phone calls) that my idea was a winner, I wound up withdrawing a portion of my 401k to pay the $8,450 fee for their Advanced Development Program.

In my conversations with their sales rep, one area of concern for me was manufacturer leads.

He told me they had literally THOUSANDS of applicable manufacturer leads and I would be sending out many, many intro packages. After had convinced me (through dozens of high pressure phone calls) that my idea was a winner, I wound up withdrawing a portion of my 401k to pay the $8,450 fee for their Advanced Development Program.

Two years later?

After almost 2 years, "No Advance Development" occurred at all. So far, I have been sent a total of 11 manufacturer introduction packages with 10 (ten) leads each. I am told one more package will arrive before the contract expires in May of 2005.

That will equal 120 leads over the course of 2 years. Divide $8,500 by 120 and you get $70.83 per lead. Many of these leads were for companies in Europe and Asia, whom probably could not even read the brochure. Nowhere near the thousands of leads I was led to believe I would be receiving. In fact 8 weeks would typically go by without a word from Invent-Tech, then one lead package with a whole ten leads. Then another 8 weeks of nothing. There no product development effort whatsoever. There was also no interest in answering my questions with straight answers. The answer they kept giving me regarding the lack of leads was that they did not want to send out too many, since if they did, then they would not be able to properly service all the manufacturers requests. What a joke!

The video they produced was simply an ad for Invent-Tech and the virtual demo is simply an easy to create gimmick that has been showed to ZERO prospects. The drawing they sent me (see attached sample) could be cranked out in 2 minutes. No Action, No Advanced Development:
On many occasions, I attempted to contact an engineer or supervisor, of which I doubted that one even existed. From my phone conversations, their so called "staff" appears to be young, inexperienced bodies trained to answer a phone and read all answers from a written script or replies. At no time was I ever able to reach someone with more than an apparent high school level education.

The letters (one from August 19, 2003 enclosed) and responses from Invent-Tech always stated things like "we are right on target" and "we are pleased with the results thus far and look forward to the continued implementation of the Advanced Development Agreement", when in fact, NO RESULTS have taken place and NO DEVELOPMENT is being implemented.

The whole reason customers fall for this type of scam is that they think their product will actually be "developed" to a more "advanced" stage to make it appealing to potential manufacturers. This is NO WAY occurred with Invent-Tech. They took no action to do any development. All they did was fire off a few leads every 2 months. Typical "good" marketing response is 2%. Their efforts, if they could be rated as "good" (which they can not) would have yielded 2.4 manufacturer replies in the course of 2 years. Of that, only 2% would be interested enough to license the idea. That's .048 manufacturers.

The reality I have now discovered is that Invent-Tech is not at all interested in acquiring manufacturers to license products. Only collecting the fees for their so-called "services" through (at least in my case) misleading patent research. All in all, a very frustrating & bad experience.

Along the way, I could see this was going nowhere, but I thought there was no other way to resolve the fact that I was scammed in to this agreement by poor patent search reporting in the "Invention Research and Documentation Proposal" stage.

The bottom line is that I was scammed out of $9,307. I can't say that any of the so-called services they provided would be worth any more than $500. Until now I have been reluctant to file any complaints, simply because I figured "what good will it do?" Their contract was certainly written to disallow me any practical means of disputing their poor level of service. If I were to take them to court, I would have to fly to Florida to do so.

Now that I have allowed them ample time to provide their service, I wanted to follow up with you (USPTO) in an attempt to let you know what this company is doing in the area of product patents and to inform the general public. If I get no reply from you, I will follow up with the FTC and the Florida State AG's office.

I have attempted on many occasions to get the company owner on the phone, but I always get a high school or college intern, who claims to be a supervisor, then leads me through a pile of double talk and nothing is ever resolved. I am hoping this report will prompt appropriate action from Invent-Tech in the way of a substantial refund of the fees paid. That is the only resolution that would give them any level of respectability.

I cannot afford to take them to court, but (pending a response from Invent-Tech) I can certainly help make the general public aware of their business practices through the network of web logs and patent related forums.

You have my full permission to use this information in your forum section if you so desire. Thank you.

Signed: /s/ Steven J. Houdek                            Date: April 8, 2005

KEY: =online business system =fees =forms=help =laws/regulations =definition (glossary)

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