Mind your designs ...
While playing around on the patents.com site, the IPKat's eye was caught by one of those Google Ads on the right hand side of his screen. It was headedUK Patent Office"UK Patent Office" -- it's not so often one hears those words these days. Anyway, both "UK Patent Office" and the advertisement itself are hyperlinked to this site, calling itself Design Mind Group. The link leads to an on-screen form, illustrated with the liberating "Fun on the Beach" (right), which invites inventors to "take action now and submit your idea today". While the legend at the bottom of the page reassuringly reads
Avoid Patent Office Mistakes See If Your Idea Qualifies - Secure
"Confidentiality Notice: All information acquired via this website is deemed strictly confidential and may not be sold, leased, bartered, or conveyed in any other manner without the expressed written permission of the owner of said invention",there is no named human being whom one can contact if anything goes wrong. The Design Mind Group appears to be based in Wilmington, Delaware, which might be an inconvenient place for non-Delaware innovators to litigate. Not that anything could go wrong: the Design Mind Group's resources, comfortingly, appear to be the World Intellectual Property Organization, the USPTO, the European Patent Office and various other venerable bodies.
Elsewhere on the internet the question has been raised as to whether there is a scam.
The IPKat would be curious to hear from anyone who knows anything of this operation. Merpel says, aren't you glad this weblog doesn't carry Google Ads?
