Mr. Norman made some responses to a small post I made at the Forum for InventorSpot.com . I refer to his response in my reply below.
There are a couple of key points to my blog that Mr. Norman does not mention in his statement above:
1. Norman, using a commissioned and therefore highly motivated MMG sales force, trolls the USPTO database looking for targets for his boilerplate marketing “services” which are now apparently priced at $7500. This fee is to be paid in advance, a practice now universally deemed unacceptable within the invention community. This is a lot of money. You do the math. Just ten of these contracts is $75,000; one hundred is $750,000. We know from the FTC mandated disclosure that Davison Design's income from royalties is .001% of its cash flow, meaning that the vast majority of its income is from worthless marketing "services", and we can extrapolate from that as to how the other promoters are doing. Licensing new technology is difficult, but writing marketing contracts is terrific cash flow. So Norman maintains that he is a "full service intellectual property broker" or whatever, but where do you think his cash is really coming from? And how much incentive is there to effectively market a product, a difficult and time consuming process, if the easy money is coming in through another pipe? Further, it can logically be assumed that the vast majority of those who purchase these “services” never see a dime of return on their investment.
2. Norman exploits a loophole in the American Inventor’s Protection Act which inexcusably exonerates him from its upfront reporting requirements. He does not have to disclose under the Act, you cannot file a complaint against him at the USPTO under the Act, and you cannot sue him under the Act. Think it through: Norman has actually taken the AIPA and turned it upside down so that it now protects HIM, the invention promoter, not the inventor. Sweet trick, and I think everyone should know about it. I suspect that he is particularly averse to being questioned about this.
The Real Truth -- Post by Scott Norman » Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:46 am
My
name is Scott Norman and yes, I'm the founder and president of
Millennium Marketing Group out of Overland Park, Kansas. I normally
don't participate in blogs of this nature,...
Mr. Norman, why is it that you would not want to "participate in blogs of this nature"? You are an invention promoter, and this is a blog for inventors. Wouldn't it be natural for you to want to engage in discussions with potential "clients", people who are members of the community with which you claim to be intrinsically connected? Or might it be that there are just a few too many embarrassing questions lurking out there about your business practices, like the writing of worthless marketing contracts, shoddy to non-existent workmanship and, in particular, your cynical use of the AIPA to protect yourself and MMG from the invention community?
...however I feel it's
important that we expose the truth and basis of Mr. Bujaryns comments
(the author of mmgreview and patentmoversreview websites).
Mr. Norman, everything I post in this blog http://www.patentmoversreview.com is based upon direct personal experience and is, unfortunately for
you, factual and true. There is nothing to "expose". I have, however,
taken pains to make it clear that I will post specific comments from
you or your attorneys within that blog, and I will immediately correct
any alleged "misstatements" contained therein, although it is difficult
to imagine what those might be. To date, I have seen no responses from
you.
He is a disgruntled client...
No
kidding. Disgruntled, outraged, pissed off... However you want it, Mr.
Norman. You took my money, wasted my time, gave me absolutely nothing
in return and have lied to my face repeatedly. Read my blog. In
particular, read the chronology of my experience with your "company".
And then read my response to the comments you made at the Inventblog.
...that is doing his best to slander our company and spread lies about our services and capabilities.
This ongoing attempt on your part to represent that I have fabricated all of this out of thin air and am attacking you and MMG for no reason is outrageous, absurd and, frankly, idiotic. This is how all of my dealings with you have gone and is one of many reasons that I would, based on personal experience, recommend that no one have anything to with you or your "company".
Further, Mr. Norman, you need a dictionary. From Wikipedia:
"Slander
refers to a malicious, false and defamatory spoken statement or report,
while libel refers to any other form of communication such as written
words or images."
Now, Mr. Norman, I am a former "client" of yours who has sued you and deposed both you and your employees as part of that legal action. This gives me a highly unique and insightful perspective as to who you are and how you operate. In addition to 12 months of contractual hell with MMG I have hundreds of pages of legal documents in my possession relating to you and your company. None of this material casts even the hint of a positive light on your way of doing "business". I have meticulously and accurately documented my experience with your "company". I have lodged numerous highly detailed complaints against you and MMG which took place before, during and after the period of that lawsuit. You have been unwilling or unable to answer to or refute even one of those detailed charges. You have lied to me repeatedly. If one reads my blog one could understand why all of this makes you so uncomfortable, but my dear Mr. Norman, what ye sow so shall ye reap. Plus, you have that First Amendment problem...
By the way, I never mention the "capabilities" of your company. I simply state what happened during the time when I was a "client" of MMG and allude to the facts of our lawsuit. I then draw logical conclusions from those observations and invite the reader to then draw his or her own conclusions from what I experienced.
I am not lying about anything, Mr. Norman. This is a problem for you. None of this is slander, and none of this is libel. It is called "fair comment". What I have written is, to the very best of my knowledge, completely accurate, will be corrected where it is not, and is absolutely protected under the First Amendment to the constitution.
I'm an actual inventor...
What you invented was something called the Ripclean Hairbrush. It was never produced and never earned you a cent, although you seem to allude that it has. It is one more dead, meaningless patent among hundreds of thousands of dead, meaningless patents. It would not impress the readers of this site. It qualifies you for nothing. I cover this in my blog.
...that discovered the lack of professional assistance (primarily in commercilization and exit strategies) for the small entity community.
So, what, you developed a commissioned sales force that constantly trolls the USPTO database seeking targets for hundreds of unsolicited marketing offers every month? You call this an improvement? These commissioned sales people are highly motivated to sell "contracts" for "marketing services" to their targets. I believe that those contracts are now priced at $7500. Based upon a ratio of contracts sold to actual income returned to their purchasers, those contracts are worthless. Because you cynically exploit a loophole in the American Inventor's Protection Act that excuses you from its reporting requirements you do not disclose in advance to a potential purchaser of your "services" that he or she will almost certainly lose every dime they invest with your "firm".
My firm, Millennium Marketing Group has successfully licensed and sold dozens of patents for our clients. In fact representation by our firm for our clients generated nearly seven million dollars (yes, $7,000,000) in royalties and acqusition (sic) fees in the last six (6) months of 2008 alone!!! Not to mention the millions of dollars we have generated for our clients since our inception.
Mr. Norman, do you think that I and the readers of this blog are stupid? Do you read the newspapers? Does the name Bernie Madoff, among many others, mean anything to you?
You claim millions of dollars of royalty income as a way of promoting your firm. You use these claims as part of your solicitation of new marketing contracts, and yet not one single dime of this claimed income is verified by independent audit. You operate in a field (invention promotion) that is rife with fraud and has successfully avoided the reporting requirements that apply to all other forms of investing in this country. The one means of protection that would force at least partial disclosure of this critical information by MMG, the American Inventor's Protection Act, has a gaping loophole which you have gleefully exploited as part of your marketing strategy.
Because you claim to deal only with previously patented inventions you do not have to report under the Act, one cannot file a complaint with the USPTO about you under the Act, and one cannot sue you under the Act. This is stunning: You have actually taken an act of Congress that was designed to protect the inventor and flipped it around so that it protects YOU, the invention promoter. In fact, you operate and make claims as to income without any universally accepted restraint of independently verifiable auditing requirements whatsoever. And you seem to think you can do all of this with impunity. Pretty damn bulletproof, aren't you? This is not only completely unacceptable, this is insane.
And as to the "millions" that you have "made" since your inception, the salesman who sold me the MMG contract stated that during the period of his employment with MMG, a period of some three years to the middle of 2004, he was aware of only one successful placement by MMG, a concrete form used in the construction industry. Nor was he or any of your other employees aware of anything sold by MMG prior to that time, and yours was a small office. Nor did you produce evidence of these "millions" during the period of our lawsuit, although you were under court order to do so. This would mean that virtually all of your operating income during that period came from the sale of marketing contracts, the sale of which represented a total loss to every one of their purchasers.
But let's just say, for the sake of arguement that you ARE selling something. And maybe you are. Does it make any difference? The trend within the invention promotion industry, of which you are part, is to use isolated and unverifiable claims of sales "successes" as a way of increasing the sale of worthless marketing "services". The only valid questions for you at this point are a) how many solicitations does your sales force make annually; b) how many of those solicitations result in a marketing contract sale; c) of those contracts sold, how many actually returned as much or more money to their purchasers than they spent with you, and d) most critically, what is the ratio of your licensing income to that derived from the sale of marketing services?
Again, Mr. Norman, do you think that I / we are stupid? And just how far do you want to push this?
Additionallly (sic) we are assisting and providing the funding for our clients in two (2) federal cases on the basis of patent infringement and breach of contract currently (sic).
So what? What does this have to do with the writing of marketing contracts by MMG that will never return a dime to their purchasers? What does this have to do with your cynical exploitation of a loophole in the American Inventor's Protection Act that exonerates you from the consequences of having to disclose your abysmal failure rate at marketing those contracts?
It would be good for a blog of this professional manner to research the facts on a company and complete the necessary due diligence before you go agreeing with someone (Mr. Bujaryn)...
http://www.patentmoversreview.com or http://www.mmgreview.com, thank you very much.
...who is being investigated for legal recourse based on his attempts to smear my good name and lie about our companies (sic) capabilities.
Mr. Norman, let me explain something to you. You cannot take a pile of horse manure and turn it into a pile of horse manure because it already IS a pile of horse manure. Nor is there any reason or need to attempt to change the nature of said pile. You, your "name", the nature of MMG's "business practices" and what you did to me and others as "clients" of MMG are what they are because of deliberate decisions and actions taken by you. You could have chosen to do otherwise, but you did not. So, you live in a country called America and, in this country, we have worked out a system of consequences for those who deliberately choose to screw others. This system of consequences is protected, among other means, by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
I am well aware that you have your attorneys combing over every word I have written. I, too, have a couple of attorneys, and they are very good. You are not investigating anything. There is no slander, no libel, no inaccuracies, and nothing for you to sue about. If you choose to come to Colorado and challenge me on a First Amendment defense, this is up to you. Your empty threats and baseless allegations do not scare me in the least.
And by the way, Mr. Norman, no one who claims
millions of dollars of unverified income as a way of soliciting new
business can have a good name. He is simply someone to avoid at all
possible costs.
We have actual
references to back up the above claims and have an excellent reputation
with the majority of our clients regardless of success or failure.
You always have excuses. You are always promising something that will never arrive just before you disappear out the back door. You make me sick. Send those references right here, Mr. Norman. We'd love to talk with them. And actually, you have a lot of clients who, like myself, are seriously "disgruntled".
As we all know commercilization of patents and new product development is a very difficult process. Millennium is one of the very best options for a inventor looking to reduce thier (sic) risks in getting a product or technology to market, not to mention we will be completely honest with the inventor during the entire process.
Mr. Norman, do you sit down with your potential "clients" and explain to them that in dealing with you they have no protection under the American Inventor's Protection Act? Do you explain to them that there is a loophole in the law that you have exploited to your advantage, completely reversing its meaning and intent? Not only do you, an invention promoter, not have to disclose under the Act, but you cannot be sued under the Act and one cannot file a complaint against you with the USPTO under the Act. Do you explain this fully and truthfully? Do you tell these potential "clients" that if anything goes wrong in their dealings with you that they will be essentially out in the cold, with no recourse whatsoever?
Your "firm" demands $7500 as an up-front fee to supposedly "market" an invention to industry. This is the number one red flag among the invention community, a situation to be avoided at all costs. Do you explain to your "prospects", and here I extrapolate from Davison, that their chances of success with MMG are well less than 1%? That they are about to lose every dime they give you? Certainly, I made a mistake, and I want others to avoid facing the same problem. When you initially solicited my business one of your claims was that my risk would be absolutely minimized by dealing with MMG. In fact, exactly the opposite was true. From the outset there was virtually no chance of MMG successfully marketing my product, nor was there any chance whatsoever that I would see a return on my investment or receive my principal back. Everything was totally at risk, and everything was lost.
Being
"completely honest" with the inventor would, in this case, involve full
disclosure on your part under the American Inventor's Protection Act,
but that disclosure might pose a few problems for you, might it not? I
am a reference for MMG and will be glad to talk with anyone who wants
to about the risks associated with doing business with you, basing that
conversation on my personal experiences and your total lack of fiscal
transparency. As to whether or not you are "completely honest with the
inventor" I state categorically that you are not.
Mr. Bujaryn spent over $50k in legal fees...
I
did spend some money, Mr. Norman, but your numbers are wrong. What else
is new. Still, between being a paid "client" of MMG and suing you, I
certainly earned the right to be a highly qualified reference for your
firm.
...trying to extort money from our firm because we were unsucessful (sic) in marketing his patent,
You know, Mr. Norman, I'm surprised your attorneys let you wander this far off the reservation. Making a transparently phony and very public charge of "extortion" is extreme, even for someone with your reputation for lying and flying into rages when backed into a corner.
And by the way, my patent was never marketed by MMG because neither you nor anyone else in your "company" ever made the slightest attempt to do so. In 2002 I signed a contract with you to perform certain marketing services for me. During that 12 month period of contractual obligation you did not perform even a single one of the services which you promised both verbally and in writing and were legally bound to perform. Not one. You lied to me, took my money and gave me nothing in return. I consulted a Kansas attorney about this matter in detail, it was determined that I had recourse under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act and I pursued that avenue. It was all done completely legally and within the system and at great personal cost to myself. This is not extortion, Mr. Norman, but you do indeed choose to live in a twisted world.
...but his attempt was thrown out of court becasue (sic) he didn't even have a legitmate (sic) case.
Mr. Norman, had I been able to sue you under the American Inventor's Protection Act, as I had initially tried to do, the outcome of that case would have been very different, wouldn't it? But you, Scott Norman, discovered a loophole in the law which allows you, the invention promoter, to turn it upside down and protect yourself and your business "practices" from people like me, the inventor...
Nonetheless I have covered all of this in detail on my page about that legal action at http://www.mmgreview.com, see the section on the lawsuit. Since you continue to make false representations about the outcome of that case, I would have to conclude that a) your attorney has lied to you about how the case was resolved, and you never bothered to check yourself, or b) you are more capable of self-delusion than even I would have imagined or c) you are a pathological liar. In any case let me remind you once again that the case was settled through a mediator, by the mutual consent of both parties, and was not found "baseless" nor was there a "summary judgment", as you have claimed elsewhere, nor was it "thrown out of court".
And by the way, Mr. Norman, this cuts directly to the heart of your vast credibility problem. If you can't even tell the truth about something as simple as the documented outcome of a court action how are we to believe your undocumented claims of millions of dollars in earned royalty income?
As a good business consultant, I advise anyone who contacts our firm to complete all necessary due diligence before doing business with anyone. We are happy to always back up our claims with legitmate (sic) references and our success speaks for itself. If anyone from this blog has any additonal (sic) questions for me personally or wants to learn more about our firm, please contact me at: 913.317.9114
Rock and roll, Mr. Norman.
Do to what I have just read Scott won;t get a single cent from me.
Tganks for the warning.
Posted by: Goat | September 20, 2011 at 07:07 AM