Hey Cannon Crappie, i have a neighbor who just went through the submitting of an idea to a reasearh company from Florida. He sent the $800 bucks and they made an evaluation on his idea. I seen the drawings and it was and still is a good idea but after he seen it on the market 2 months later he thought it was stolen and he called the (idea company). He asked if they took the idea and manufactured it because Dupont was interisted in it. Thier answer was no they didn’t but a previous couple, a supposed man and his wife submitted that (same) idea to them and after these people put thier hopes in this (idea Company) they were told to promote this idea themselves. He found this out because this (idea company) gave him the phone number of this couple and this couple told him that this is what this (idea company) told them to do. This kind of dosent make sense because they told him that they were still promoting thier idea and it wasen’t on the market yet. So where did this idea origionally come from. Can you see now what goes on. If in fact these people were just another couple or were someone posing as another couple, or were just a close brother and sister in law to the idea companies owner, and this company did in fact steel this idea, was hard to prove because of the expense in finding out(if at all possible) who these people really were. As to patenting ideas, sometimes its not worth the trouble to patent an idea because if its a good one it take three improvements to constitute a new patent and there are alot of good engineers out there who do this day in and day out for a living for huge companies. Lots of times its wise to find a manufacturer who will build and market them for you as theres lots of companies who do this and flood the market, get you hard earned money, and wait for new sales or resales, then it is to patent an idea. If you live around the cities area, or Chicago, they have a patent library, or used to, to search your idea yourself so you won’t infringe on someone elses idea and can keep your expenses down. Maybe one or two week ends and you can find out the perticulars on your idea with the librarians help. Looking through others ideas too can spur the imagination for more ideas too. There are books that list manufacturers in the United States and what kind of manufacturing they are involved with, maybe the library in the cities area will know of these. If it were me i think i trust companies that manufacture products over these (idea companies) because if they do business with you there is a paper trail that you’ve done business, or just submitted the idea, with statements stating that they won’t make without your consent. Ask for references to begin with, but like in almost everything there is almost always a back door so be careful with these companies too. Be careful and good luck
