“Inventor confidential” by Warren Tuttle.
I recently received a new book to enlarge my understanding of the Intellectual property landscape in the U.S.
After reading and initially finding the book light and informative, I stumbled on a few sentences, suddenly changing my opinion about the book and its author.
I think one more of the long line of pretenders clinging to public support but representing the opposite interest. Trojan horses or wolf’s in sheep’s skin.
Are you Inventor? Beware
After reading this book, I see two points bringing attention.
1) Inventor commission based on NET company profits?
2) Patent Assignment? WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Both create a disadvantage for the Inventor.
The NET?
After subtracting all expenses, I would not be surprised that the Inventor owes money to the licensee.
The talk about “ethical corporations” is not worth the paper it is written on.
There is a paper with numbers, and God only knows what is behind all listed “expenses.”
2) The forced Assignment?
It shows the true face represented by the author corporations.
In short, the Inventor is losing their invention in exchange, not for payment but a promise.
“The Assignment” creates more problems than it solves. For example, as described in this book, the author suggest that the Inventor may take advantage of the assignee’s purchasing power by buying the product from the manufacturer.
Really? After the “Assignment,” Inventor cannot do that without licensing the patent from the new owner. All the possible venues to bring in additional licensees are gone.
In essence, the author is telling us that it is normal when you rent a house to expect the owner to sign the title of the house to the renter.
The author tells us that inventors normally expect to give up their ownership in exchange for a promise, not a payment. Of course, it appears “Lifetime Brands.” requests an “assignment.” every time from the vulnerable Inventor, but this is an expression of their arrogance and lack of consideration for The Inventor.
Even a quick internet search of the term “assignment.” results in the warnings that the Inventor may lose their rights to the invention forever.
Signing up for the “assignment” is not the most fantastic Advice!!
Also surprising is that so well-informed authors lack knowledge about The PTAB.
The official number of invalidated numbers revealed by PTAB (USPTO-Patent trial and Appeal board) during the 2019 USPTO Invention con is not 60% but 84%. Virtually any patent that proved valuable is revoked so the Big tech and Chinese corporations would not worry about competition in the U.S.
The talk about the author Warren Tuttle being outside counsel for a bunch of the corporations, unfortunately, after reading this book, appears to be just a smokescreen since there cannot be the slightest doubt about genuine interest behind it. The text in this book shows that he is not outside independent counsel, but the whole arrangement is to create an appearance… when he represents the corporation’s interest.
Wolf in sheep’s skin is probably the best description.
The book is well written and light, but I cannot recommend it or the author when it comes to the essence. The fact that he is involved in the United Inventors Association, sponsored by USPTO and financed by Google, is undoubtedly helpful for his business, but when it comes to Real Inventor’s representation? There are quite a few quasi-pro invention organizations in the U.S., for example, Electronic Frontier Foundation talking in derogatory terms about patents posing at the same time as fighting for your consumer rights, but this is a separate and quite extensive subject.
(PS The scale of the problem created by PTAB illustrates that one Chinese Corporation, Huawei used the PTAB over 700 times to invalidate United States Patent Office-issued patents.)