Bunch O’ Balloons creator Josh Malone, spokesman for US Inventor, reveals how a corrupted US Patent Office helps Big Business steal intellectual property and crush the spirit and dreams of America’s inventors
For more than two centuries, the United States patent system has incentivized, protected, and rewarded America’s most brilliant innovators by guaranteeing them exclusive ownership and the right to profit from their new life-bettering products and technologies. Fueled by the increased productivity these inventions provided and the jobs they spawned, America flourished and prospered.
Tragically, the 200-year-old-mission of the US Patent Office quietly changed with the passage of the 2011 America Invents Act and the creation of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Now, because of that legislation, the US Patent Office is no longer a place where patents are born — it’s a place where patents belonging to small inventors are taken to die at the hands of big corporations and PTAB administrative judges.
THE PATENT ASSASSINS: 84% PERCENT KILL RATE
The ostensible purpose for the PTAB was to provide a faster and less expensive process for reviewing mistakenly granted patents. Unfortunately, what Congress created has morphed into an unrestrained, unaccountable tribunal eliminating competition from disruptive inventors for the benefit of multi-billion (and trillion) dollar corporations. Referred to as a “death squad for patents”, PTAB has become the perfect weapon for protecting Big Business from the threat of inventors with better ideas by invalidating and canceling the “little guy’s patents, putting them out of business. The administrative “judges” of the PTAB have invalidated 84% of the almost 3,000 issued patents which they have reviewed.
JOSH’S STORY
Josh Malone invented the number one selling outdoor toy Bunch O Balloons, a hose attachment that allows kids to fill up 100 water balloons in under a minute. Shortly after launching his invention and raising close to $1M from 21,000 backers on Kickstarter, a knock-off called Balloon Bonanza was featured in a TV commercial from the “As Seen on TV” company, Telebrands. Emails obtained in court proceedings years after the fact revealed a deliberate scheme – “[t]his is only the first proto so assume this will have 37 filler rods and balloons (or more or less) like theirs and work exactly like the original ‘Bunch of Balloons.’” More Telebrands knockoffs and a series of injunctions and court appearances followed over the next few years. Telebrands proved itself to be a world class patent infringer.
“When confronted in a federal court with their misdeeds, Telebrands alleged my patent was invalid because the patent office made a mistake”, says Malone. “My patent says that when the balloons are substantially filled with water, they fall off and automatically seal. They paid an MIT professor to testify that no one knows when a balloon is ‘substantially filled with water’. The federal judge and the appeals court found their argument absurd and ruled in my favor”.
However, the Telebrands attorneys then brought the case back to the patent office and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. They told the PTAB the same laughable story; Nobody can understand when a balloon is “substantially filled with water”. On the basis of that argument, the PTAB agreed my patent was flawed. The infringing party won and my patent was invalidated.”
“PTAB takes an approved patent that you and your investors have risked everything on, then pulls the rug out from under you by invalidating that patent, so the infringer doesn’t have to pay for their misdeeds. It’s a travesty and something that I am working hard as a volunteer with US Inventor to remedy,” says Malone.
“For 200 years America had the best patent system in the world, and we benefited from that for a long time. Now we must acknowledge that we don’t have that anymore. If we want it back, we’ll have to go get it.”