PITTSBURGH – A Pennsylvania licensing and marketing company associated with InventHelp is among those facing a lawsuit by consumers who allege the companies fraudulently took thousands of dollars from them and failed to deliver on their submission services agreement.
Carla Austin and Nil Leone, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, filed a complaint Oct. 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania against Invention Submissions Corp., doing business as InventHelp; Western Intervention Submission Corp., doing business as Western InventHelp; Intromark Inc. and Technosystems Service Corp. alleging violation of the American Inventor's Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA) and breach of contract.
The plaintiffs allege InventHelp represents that it would submit their inventions to businesses in its Data Bank.
"In reality, InventHelp’s submission services are a costly scam that violate the AIPA and constitute a breach of customers’ contracts’ implied covenants of good faith and fair dealing," the suit states. "InventHelp aggressively advertises its services to hopeful inventors and then extracts exorbitant fees from them ranging from $8,900 to $16,900..."
Among the promised services are matching inventors' ideas to companies in its database, which the plaintiffs claim is not accurate or up-to-date, according to the suit.
The plaintiffs seek monetary relief, trial by jury and other just relief. They are represented by Shannon Carson, Peter Kahana, Amanda Trask of the Berger Montague Law Firm PC in Philadelphia and E. Michelle Drake of Berger Montague in Minneapolis.
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania case number 2:19-CV-01396-PLD