Inventhelp and Davison - the truth behind the polish

Anyone who has read this Blog knows my opinion concerning invention promotion companies: I don't like them and I believe that they offer little if any value for the amount of money they charge. And you also know some of these companies do not like me (see my Sola posts).

One of the largest players in this field is InventHelp, who can be found at www.InventHelp.com. They were formally known as the Invention Submission Corporation. You can learn more about these guys and other promotion company's at www.inventored.org. Anyhow, InventHelp has a new (at least it is new since the last time I looked) website that is very polished and inviting. In perusing it, I can across this statement pulled directly from their site:

"From 2003 to 2005, we signed submission agreements with 6,592 clients. As a result of our services, 119 clients have received license agreements for their products, and 15 clients have received more money than they paid us for these services."

See www.inventhelp.com/story-weed-thrasher.asp.

Let's do the math: Only 0.23% of all clients who paid money to InventHelp between 2003 and 2005 actually made more money than they paid into InventHelp by way of licensing agreements presumably obtained through InventHelp services: that is 1 in 439 clients. Also interesting is that another 104 signed license agreements but, at least when InventHelp reported these statistics, the licensees had made less from the licenses than they had paid InventHelp.

Truth be told: making it in the invention game is always difficult and success numbers are never going to be extremely high, BUT 0.2% is, in my humble opinion, really low. I believe I have seen surveys and statistics at various locations that indicate that anywhere from 5-10% of all patented inventions are successful (I will try to find some of these stats and publish them in the future). In reality, I believe the true figure is even a bit lower than 5-10% but I suspect it is much higher than 0.2%. One would think that using the services of an invention promotion company would actually improve the chances of an invention being successful but InventHelp's own statistics appear to indicate otherwise. I welcome a comment and response from InventHelp explaining their statistics.

And while I am on the topic, let's take a look at another player in the invention industry, Davison, who can be found on the web at www.davison54.com.

Here are their stats taken from their website current as of 10.26.2006:

"The AIPA requires the disclosure of "the total number of customers who have contracted with the invention promoter in the past 5 years, not including customers who have purchased trade show services, research, advertising, or other non-marketing services from the invention promoter, or who have defaulted in their payment to the invention promoter." As of the date of this disclosure, the number of applicable customers for Davison is thirty six thousand nine hundred fifty four (36,954)."

They continue...

"The AIPA requires the disclosure of "the total number of customers known by the invention promoter to have received a net financial profit as a direct result of the invention promotion services provided by such invention promoter." Because the AIPA defines "invention promotion services" as "the procurement or attempted procurement for a customer of a firm, corporation, or other entity to develop and market products or services that include the invention of the customer" the company may exclude fees paid for services such as design and construction of prototypes from the expenses incurred by its customers and may report that twenty one (21) customers received a net financial profit since the company was founded in 1989. However, if design and prototype expenses are considered as part of the customer's expenses for determining net financial profit under the AIPA, the number of customers who received a net financial profit over the company's history is twelve (12)."

See http://www.davison54.com/disclosures/aipa.php. So since 1989 and the Davison's inception, 12 customers have made more than they paid to Davison. But we do not know the total number of clients since inception since the number of customers reported pertains only to the last FIVE years. However, if we for sake of discussion divide 12 by 36,954, we come up with a whooping 0.03% success rate or 1 in over 3000. And we can conclude the real number is much worse since Davison must have had a few clients from 1989 through much of 2001. Actually, Davison makes InventHelp look good. By the way, I welcome comments from Davison as well.

Why do I think the success rates for these companies are so low. Perhaps I will comment in a future post. However, as I stated above, I would really like to have someone from Davison and someone from InventHelp post explanations as comments to this post.