Posted on 01/25/2005 12:08:32 PM PST by Yaelle
My friend, who has a USA patent on an invention, received the following two emails. It looks too good to be true. Does this look familiar? Is this one step up from the Nigerian scams? Or could this possibly be legit? (Details and names removed)
[Name of sender] <[name of sender]@yahoo.com> wrote:
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 02:11:08 -0800 (PST)
From: [Name of sender]
Subject: More Info - [Name of Invention]
To: [my friend's email addy]
Dear [My friend]
My client Mr [Name of client] has been in his family Shipping business, Hotel business, Casino Business and Estate business here in Tokyo for many years. He is capable of paying for the patents and says he will be willing to proceed with the purchase of the patents as soon as you are ready. He demands to have a little more information on the invention and the patent in order to enable him make a suitable price offer. He also wants to know if it will be possible for you to send him a photocopy of the first page of the patent by email attachment. This will positively assure my client on the reality of his proposed investment. Furthermore, he would like to have a little more information of sales projections based on marketability of the product and possible economic impact it would have worldwide. I will be waiting on this information from you as soon as possible. My client will want to confirm if you will be able to make this transaction in the European Union, possibly in either Dublin-Ireland or Madrid-Spain. These are the only places where he will be able to make any payments relating to purchase of the patents, due to the problems he currently faces with our government. I await your response as soon as possible.
Many thanks
[Name of sender]
[Name of Sender] <[name of sender] @yahoo.com> wrote:
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:30:38 -0800 (PST)
From: [Name of sender]
Subject: OFFER - [name of invention]
To: [my friend]
Dear [my friend]
My client will be looking forward to speaking with you on phone. However he has directed me to inform you that based on all available vital information provided
in relation to your product and patent, he has deliberated at length with his advisers, and agrees to make an initial offer of $85 million US dollars for purchase of the Invention and all its rights. He requests for you to stop further negotiations with other investors to enable him feel secure enough to continue with the bid. This he says is because of the possible worldwide economic effect the product could have. Should you wish to negotiate this offer further, then you may call to speak with my Client " Mr [Name Redacted] " on telephone number +88216-[etc.]. . My client does not speak English, so I will have to translate for him. Since you are calling from the USA, you will have to dial the numbers direct like this 011-88216-[number redacted]. The best time to call is between 7am and 11am Japan time. My client says that he will only make this purchase on a confidential and top secret basis, because our government is not in support of developing foreign inventions and products, moreover it is a difficult process for him to send money out of Japan at these times of crisis without answering to money laundering charges from government here. This means that he will not accept third party negotiations and involvement by any patent attorneys and lawyers or anyone else. He will prefer to deal with you directly for confidential reasons and assurance of security and anonymity in the transaction. Please email me immediately to let me know when you wish to call. Many thanks [name of sender]
I know we do have some FReepers from Japan here, and maybe they would know if this is anything that is going around to inventors in the States.
I will be happy to represent your friend in this matter for a 10 percent retainer.
I am not a patent attorney, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
scam alert!
Why are you asking us? Contact the guy and tell him to come to America if he is really wanting to spend 85 million for a patent.
If my nigerian benefactors come through as promised, I'll give your friend $90 million for his invention!
Scam.
Other than that, it's all above board.
Just a guess.
This is merely the "hook". The scam will follow.
Ping.
Tell him to string them along, save the exchanges and then post it to http://scamorama.com where we can all read it and have a good laugh.
Rip off. No one would effect that kind of a deal by email. They'd call you up and ask to come meet with you. They'd take you out to dinner, etc... They'd invite you to Japan. You would not be asking if they were for real.
Try doing a search on the family name.
RUN AWAY!.........
Reply that you will meet to complete the transaction when you have proof that the eighty five million is in escrow at a US bank. If you want to be generous you may decide to require only half to be put in escrow.
Here is what will happen: at some point your 'freind' will be asked to pay a certain amount of money
When that happens I hope he is smart enough to realize the scam
My friend did that and in English could only find that name in the oil business.
REEEEEEKS of SCAM! The above mentioned items notwithstanding, the amount of $$$, yahoo addy, europe for deal, it just smells bad!
RUN AWAY!
forward a copy of the emal to abuse@yahoo.com, and
RUN AWAY!
If your friend already has the patent, the larger hurdle is already crossed. 5k to get a patent might be alright for a company, for an individual it can be difficult. Shouldn't cost that much anyway, a search that used to take time and manpower (patent clerks searching hardbound crossreferenced documents). Now, a regular citizen can do the same patent search a clerk would do (online). So why, with all this automation in front of what is still a govie making the call and proclaiming "unique" your idea, does a patent still cost so many FRN?
Good luck with your patent!
Top sends
Heck, my friend would accept an escrow account with a lot less than that in it!
Also, (in addition to my previous post), do not call the phone number. This could very well be one of those scams to get you to call a number where you will be charged thousands of dollars per minute. Yes, there are such scams and the phone companies are willing accomplices.
Email back that you have already received an $85million offer from a fortune 500 company, and that if they wish to negotiate further, they should send you a non refundable $1million certified cheque as an offer of good faith.
FRAUD WARNING SIGNS (AVOID BEING SCAMMED)
"[Edited Patent Cafe's Ironman Inventing Workbook.]
"1. Nobody has more interest in your product idea than you do, so if you smell a rat - or even Think you smell a rat, there probably is one. Terminate contact - no explanation, no easy let down - get their name, phone number, and office address, then slam the phone down on high pressure salesmen.
2. If you can't deal directly with a PATENT ATTORNEY, don't deal. You should work directly with a patent attorney or agent - not their salesman or secretary. Verify with the US Patent & Trademark Office that..."
My friend already owns the patent.
Could be that this is small-time and the phone contact is the scam, more likely, as someone suggested, that this is the hook, scam to follow. In any event, I've been in this business (patents, not scams) for a long time, and I would advise any client presented with this to run, not walk, away. No legitimate business would EVER put $85 mil up front for the type of household item you're talking about, nor would they ever insist on no lwayers being involved.
There are tens of thousands of U.S. patents issued every year, many to individual "garage" inventors as opposed to corporate, "professional" inventors. Since most individual inventors view their inventions with the same degree of objectivity with which they regard their children, they present the potential for being easy marks. The patent office has a scam reporting setup. Go to http://www.uspto.gov and contact them.
Thank you very much.
Would that make our phone companies part of the scam?
Exactly! It IS a scam.
What he said. A person willing to spend $85 million would not hesitate to do business in person with attorneys present.
IMHO, it is a version of the Nigerian scam. They will try to get bank information from you and then clean out your account.
ping to a Japanese scam
The reason they want to do the deal in Europe is this. They will ask you to front 13,000 to 20,000 to their attorney group in Belgium or Holland to conclude the transaction.
I hate to say this but it sounds like they hit some ones greed button pretty good.
If you go to the scamorama site mentioned above there is a woman who played these idiots along until she got them to appear at an intersection with a web camera where she got a picture of the Nigerian who thought he had her hooked.
The reason they want to do the deal in Europe is this. They will ask you to front 13,000 to 20,000 to their attorney group in Belgium or Holland to conclude the transaction.
I hate to say this but it sounds like they hit some ones greed button pretty good.
If you go to the scamorama site mentioned above there is a woman who played these idiots along until she got them to appear at an intersection with a web camera where she got a picture of the Nigerian who thought he had her hooked.
They collect the money. They get to keep some of it. They resist any efforts to do anything to stop their partners in the scam. I guess that I would have to call them part of the scam.
"So why, with all this automation in front of what is still a govie making the call and proclaiming "unique" your idea, does a patent still cost so many FRN?"
What the heck is a "patent clerk"? ;-)
Searches are only as good as the searcher. Electronic searching saves you money only because you don't rarely have to pay to fly someone to the Patent Office anymore. Especially with mechanical inventions, a word search is of limited usefulness. Patent attorneys are notorious for using odd phrases to describe things. Take that thing on the side of your coffee mug. You may call it a handle; your friendly neighborhood patent attorney may call it a gripping mechanism, a container manipulation extension, or a beverage vessel interdigitation means. If you do a word search for "handle", you're going to miss all of the patents not using that term. The only way to do a search properly is to use the classification system, and go to the classes and subclasses where the invention is likely to be. Then, you flip through the patents one-by-one, just like you did the paper copies.
The classification system itself is, to put it generously, not intuitive. It takes experience to know where to search, experience takes time, and time is money. You can hire a public searcher for cheap, but unless you know the searcher's abilities very well, their results are often unreliable. It is a false economy to save a couple hundred bucks on the search, only to find out that you wasted $4K on an application after the examiner finds spot-on references.
Once you have a reliable search as a basis, you have to craft the claims of the application to be as broad as you can (for protection), yet avoid what's already out there (to get it allowed to issuance). If I am looking at the same or similar search results that the examiner is going to see, I can write the claims and supporting description to increase the likelihood of eventual allowance and an easier prosecution path. Again, experience = time = $.
Of course, you are perfectly free to search, write, and prosecute a patent application yourself. You are also perfectly free to perform brain surgery on yourself. In both instances, you're likely to end up with a headache and a big mess.
Anyway, there's a long answer to a short question. I guarantee it's worth every penny you paid, though!
This was written by Barnums son.
The country code on the telephone call is not right for Japan either. Japan is country code 81, not 88216 -- according to this web page, that is a special service under UAE administration into the Thuraya satellite network.
I would specifically recommend against calling that telephone number. This appears to be a scam.
That 88216 is the international dialing code for Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications, which doesn't offer service in Japan. That tell you anything?
If the sender really knew anything or had any real interest, the letter would at the very least acknowledge something about the patent, its value, possible application areas, and probably discuss partnering rather then purchasing. As it is just as generic as possible and shows no excitement about the patent contents, it is certainly a scam.
"This means that he will not accept third party negotiations and involvement by any patent attorneys and lawyers or anyone else. He will prefer to deal with you directly for confidential reasons and assurance of security and anonymity in the transaction. Please email me immediately to let me know when you wish to call. Many thanks [name of sender]"
SCAM big time.
This SCREAMS Scam to me.
Thanks. My friend does have a patent lawyer but he doesn't do patent selling contracts. Good point about snail mail and fraud. That is probably the only law that should enter into internet transactions (other than child porn laws) -- anti-fraud. Then again, caveat emptor should have everyone's beeber stuned just in case.
Sounds like he doesn't even know what he's 'buying'.
My client Mr [Name of client] has been in his family Shipping business, Hotel business, Casino Business and Estate business here in Tokyo for many years.
Why would a hotelier and real estate person need a patent? What do they know about patents? They don't have a manufacturing plant, they have real estate.
This is a scam.
Yank their chain for fun if you want, or run and hide, but don't waste any real time or effort on these idiots.
Thanks. I was looking for absolute proof that this is a scam, and this is definitely it. Wonder if it's the old Nigerians again pretending to be Japanese? I noticed they are covered by the sat phone service.
tell him the 85 Million dollar offer is a generous one and you would be willing to speak to his attorneys when he gives you a 1% deposit ( non refundable of course). If the offer is 85 mil this is reasonable.
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