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[Bill Richards]

What do the patent practitioners on the Forum do when contacted by a PC who's already been involved with one of these outfits?  What does one say?  Not say?  Precautions when dealing with such PCs?
I just receive a call from a PC who'd given an IPC nearly $1,000 for who-knows-what and now she finds out what it's going to cost to go forward and is looking for grant money.  Seems like a sad case to me, but I don't know all the details and I've never dealt with an IPC before.

[LF]

Bill:

I passed in January, and have been in the USPTO database since March. I've gotten one call every month from someone "cold calling" looking for a Patent Agent, they've gotten my name from the USPTO list.

Two of them had already spent over $1,000 with IPC's, to file, in each case a Provisional. Let's just say that these people had not understood completely the limits of what a Provisional is. The felt they were getting a much more powerful patent.

Perhaps they wanted to mis-understand, perhaps not. In either case, the fact is that they certainly felt they had been "scammed" (whether they had or not).

I declined the business, sent them to someone with more experience (this is not, yet, my main line of work). I do not believe their situation is rare (rather suspect it may be the norm). Perhaps, like the FAA, the USPTO should feature more prominently a complaint line or e-mail for these people to vent against the abusers and report "incidents".

[Bill Richards]

Thanks for your input.  There are a couple of sites for complaints:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/forms/2048.pdf and
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip/complaints.htm.