[3] Prior to the 1999 American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA), accurate statistics of the success rate of invention promotion firms were difficult to come by.
[7] The USPTO and the FTC both provide guidelines for finding legitimate invention development, prototyping and promotion firms, that comply with the AIPA.
In 1994, the FTC reached a settlement with Invention Submission Corporation, after a five-year investigation of claims that the company "misrepresented the nature, quality and success rate of the promotion services it sold to consumers."
Under the terms of a consent decree, Invention Submission Corporation – now trading as InventHelp – set aside $1.2 million for customer refunds.
[citation needed] Members of the advisory board of the company included the 2018 acting United States Attorney General Matthew Whitaker,[14] Republican Congressman Brian Mast, and the scientist Ronald Mallett.
[16] Both the USPTO and the US Federal Trade Commission[17][18] publish guidelines on how inventors can better determine if an invention promotion firm is scrupulous or not.