A foreign company interested in the patent of my product. What do you guys think?

E-commerce Business Management
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Hi guys,

I just received a paper letter sent from Bangkok Thailand to my US address. It seems like it’s a Chinese company (maybe they have VA in Thailand?) interested in the patent of my product. I wonder if this is real or scam. See the letter below.

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I did some google and found their tiny YouTube channel. See below:

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I would like to find more info about them before deciding whether I should call their 888 number. The Patent number that they listed in the letter is correct. I own it. Even though I don’t have a plan to sell (because this product is selling well on Amazon), I’m curious to know what they have to offer. Maybe buy my patent, who knows? I wonder how to get info from the factory number 885411. I’m going to dig further. Have you ever heard of something like this? What do you think? Please share your thoughts.

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Do NOT Respond! in any way!!!.

Send the Chinese NOTHING AT ALL, not even a polite “no thank you”.

If you do, you will find your patented product suddenly being knocked-off and sold under a very official-looking forged “license” using the same signature you foolishly put on your “no thank you” letter.

Sure, you can sue, and sure, you can stop them from importing into the USA with a lot of time, trouble and money (via trademarks more readily than patents) but this all takes time and money, and in the meanwhile, they are still counterfeiting your product, and selling it to the EU, Asia, etc, where your patent enforcement options are even MORE expensive, if you have any rights at all.

Trademark and copyright are far more powerful tools to control pirates, and trade secret agreements are far more powerful ways to control a 3rd-party manufacturer. And NEVER have your complete product fabricated, logoed, and boxed in the same facility, as they will simply run a 2nd shift, and sell your stuff out the back door to unethical wholesalers at far lower prices than you can.

The parable here is the one of the famous cartoonist who, with advancing age, hired a writer to create the stories in his style. Then he hired an artist to draw the strips in his style. Then he hired a colorist to color in the panels. Then he hired a captions guy to do the lettering of the captions in his style. And he never let ANY OF THEM know of the existence of any of the others, and they were all subject to very strict non-disclosure agreements, so they never told a soul. He hired a secretary to handle the mailing back and forth of scripts and sketches, and he retired to a beach.
The comic strip continued to run for a full month after he died before anyone realized he was dead.

Any level of security less than this with any 3rd party subcontractor will end in tears.

If you want to license, license to a USA entity that is NOT a DE or AZ LLC, so you know the principals by name, and make them responsible for counterfeit enforcement, planet-wide, as a condition of the license. Make them go get all the trademarks in all the 3rd world nations.

Patents are a license to go bankrupt on legal fees chasing pirates who have no visible assets, who will simply disappear and reappear under a new name when you finally get a default judgment against them.

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The “Intake Form” is…interesting.

Also found:

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Thanks for your reply. Good to know this.

Agree. I believe that US patent is only valid for USA. So this Chinese company could just copy my product and sell in other countries. I wonder why would he care about my patent. This let me to believe that he would like to sell in the US.

haha I like this summary :slight_smile:

Let see what others have to say. Thanks for your contribution. I appreciate it.

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Papy, thanks for this info! :open_mouth: Wow, it’s a brand spanking new company found less than a month ago. That’s a red flag in my book. They chose to register in Thailand (the “baht” is the Thai currency) instead of China. Interesting. I wonder if they prefer a more stable democracy country like Thailand over Chinese communist country.

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More likely this, methinks: the entity is part and parcel of Beijing’s “Silk Road Initiative” (aka “Belt and Road”) - which is primarily driven by the PRC’s drive to achieve global economic dominance.

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Well, possibly. It’s weird that the name of their CEO, Thomas Mills, is not a Chinese name. Or maybe that’s a fake name to make it appear more western friendly :slight_smile:

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The letter is very generic, this is spam when it’s email. “Your product” - no mention of the actual item. They probably send 100’s of these every day hoping to catch someone.

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Thanks for your reply. Good point. The only specific is the patent number of my product. Oh well, I think it’s a scam because of the age of the company (less than a month old as Papy found).

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Hello i received the same letter, i spoke with someone but didn’t give them any information, i told the i need to speak to my lawyer, they sent me an NDA, to have my lawyer look over.

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Welcome to the SAS (“Sellers Ask Sellers Forum” - aka the BSFE, “BEST Seller Forums Experience”), Mona.

Please ask your attorney to ‘look sharp’ for loopholes.

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The company in question joined the forum here and began to spam the forum. We have removed their ability to participate. We do not tolerate spam or spammers.

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For future reference, here are some resources for you, when asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) or confidentiality agreement.

But remember that if there aren’t two signatures, the NDA is null and void.

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I guess I should explain in more detail, as I have actual license agreements with overseas parties, but have avoided doing any business with the Chinese, as their laws do not enforce things like NDAs well.

The better approach if one MUST deal with them is to have a law firm in China draft an NNN (A Non-disclosure, Non-use, and Non-circumvention) agreement:

This kind of agreement goes far beyond mere protection of confidential information - it has additional provisions related to non-use and non-circumvention.

BUT - China still plays games and stacks the deck to permit theft of your IP, and here are some things learned by others the hard way:

The agreement, to be enforceable in China against a firm in China, must be written in Chinese so that mis-translation does not create ambiguity.

It should cite Chinese law as the governing law, not US law, or any other country’s law (this is obvious, but overlooked when boilerplate is used from other agreements, which is more commonly done than not done.

There are other pitfalls, but the only way to win this game is not not play with the Chinese at all - I know this sounds racist AF, but China has been stealing US IP for decades by any means possible, and Chinese nationals are arrested for industrial espionage almost daily, so I am not exaggerating here.

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If you want to do business in china and give them your IP there’s 2 options

  1. Be able to trust the company to not steal your IP. Unless you know someone personally or have done business with a company for a long time, good luck with this.
  2. Accept the fact that they can and will make unauthorized copies of your product, including your brand name on it.

You can forget about taking legal action against them. You, as an american company will not be able to enforce any IP agreement with a chinese company. Unless you’re a major company like Apple with the resources to make sure the agreements are actually followed, those agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

A US trademark infringement lawsuit costs upwards of 100K. And that’s with attorneys that know the established laws here. Now you’re talking about paying those attorneys to go and try to navigate a foreign country’s laws (which aren’t rights owner friendly at all). If you hire a chinese attorney directly you’ll probably get ripped off as well.

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You can easily sue them and get their infringing products on the list of things that CPB will not allow into the USA at all, but this will not stop them from selling in the EU and other markets.

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Considering how many fake gucci bags make it into the US I don’t think relying on CPB to do your IP enforcement is a great strategy.

It’s really just best to not work with a manufacturer you can’t trust.

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Really?

In 2017 the CBP and ICE announced that they seized a RECORD number of counterfeit products totaling 34,143 shipments.

FYI - 89% from China/Hong Kong

90% were seized via Express Carrier and International Mail shipments.

That calculates only about 3,400 at the ports.

Just looked up LA/Long Beach Port ONLY, and in 2017 there were 3,863,187 Containers arrivals. I have no idea, but Individual shipments per container must average 5-10 per container? Some containers have 100’s, while a good chunk contain only 1

Add other west coast ports, Houston, New York, etc

and I would guess (again) 1 in 50,000 shipments are seized.

Just does not sound like I would be banking on the CPB to catch any specific product

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CBP at the ports are far more concerned about people smuggling drugs, drug money, weapons, and humans. People who bring in fake products by the containerload generally aren’t stupid either, they hide the goods so that it’s not obvious on a cursory look, and CBP can’t search every box in every container that’s coming in.

Ultimately it’s your own responsibility to protect your IP.

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My BIL is a special agent for ICE / works with CBP on occasion.

You are correct.

Inspirational story. He was in the south tower on the 70th floor when the north got hit, working for an international bank as an intern.

They were told to stay. He did not. The rest of his team did. They didn’t make it.

I will never get that day out of my mind. I was out late the night before shooting pool and drinking with a friend. I was working retail back in 2001 and had Tuesdays off. I was sleeping till around 11am. Slept through all of it.

Got up, made some breakfast. Sat down to catch up on the news. Couldn’t believe my eyes. I ran upstairs to find my then 75 year old FIL crying because he had no idea where his son was and hadn’t heard from him.

He made the decision to drive into Brooklyn to try and find him, hoping he was with everyone else walking out of Manhattan. I went with him. We found him without even knowing where he might be or if he was even alive. He was covered in dust but unharmed physically.

It still feels like that was yesterday.

A month later, he was in Atlanta for 6 months straight training to be an ICE agent because he wanted to do something to protect our country after what he / we all went through. He’s just a few years away from retirement now.

I really need to write a book. So much weird good and bad ■■■■ has happened in my life.

ETA - He’s very tight lipped about what he does. I could never do that job - LOL

He did tell one story once about being in a room literally full of drug money. Millions and millions of dollars.

He has no social media accounts. Everything is in his wife’s maiden name where they live. Won’t allow pictures of him to be posted anywhere. It’s a very dangerous job and he travels all over the world for the job, mostly South America.

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