Twelve Questions to Ask Before Hiring an Invention Firm

The Federal Trade Commission has filed enforcement actions against more than a dozen invention promotion outfits since 1994 under the American Inventors Protection Act. The pattern repeats: glossy marketing, vague promises, big upfront fees, and a contract that funnels every outcome back to the firm. You can sort the firms that do the work from the ones that sell the work by asking the right twelve questions before you sign anything.

This article walks through each question, why it matters, and what a direct answer sounds like. Enhance Innovations has worked on the design and engineering side of this industry since 2010, out of Champlin, Minnesota, and the questions below are the ones every inventor should put on the table in the first call.

Why the questions matter more than the marketing

A polished website tells you what a firm wants you to believe. The answers to twelve specific questions tell you what they do in practice, who does it, and what happens when a project hits a snag. The questions cost nothing to ask. The wrong firm costs real money and 12 to 36 months of your time.

Inventors who skip this step often discover the gap between marketing copy and contract scope after the first invoice. By then the negotiating room is gone.

Question 1: Can you send me your Better Business Bureau rating and complaint history?

A current BBB rating is the cheapest signal you can pull. Look for an A or A+ accreditation, then ask the firm to send their full complaint summary. A firm with nothing to hide emails it without friction. A firm with a pattern of complaints deflects, changes the subject, or sends marketing material instead.

Cross-check the rating yourself at bbb.org. Look at the complaint count over the last three years and read what types of complaints repeat. Billing disputes with vague resolutions are a different signal than a single shipping delay.

Question 2: What does your engagement actually deliver, and in what form?

This separates a real product development firm from a marketing shop. A firm that does the work can describe concrete deliverables: industrial design, photorealistic renderings, a CAD model, product animation, marketing materials such as a sell sheet and pitch package. A firm that sells the work talks about “exposure” and “getting your idea in front of companies” without naming a single tangible output.

Ask what you hold in your hand at the end. The answer should be a virtual prototype package and supporting materials you own, not a promise of attention.

Question 3: What is your published success rate, and how do you define success?

Federal law requires invention promoters to disclose their success rate under 35 USC 297. The disclosure must include the number of customers who received a net financial profit as a direct result of the firm’s services and the number who received a license agreement.

A firm that hands you the disclosure document without being prompted is doing the right thing. A firm that says “we don’t track that” or “every project is different” is not in compliance.

Read the disclosure. The numbers tend to be small across the whole industry, and that is the reality of inventing, not a flaw of one firm. What matters is whether the firm puts the numbers in writing before you sign, and whether it makes claims about your outcome that the disclosure does not support.

Question 4: Can I see a sample contract before I commit to a paid step?

You should be able to read the entire engagement contract before you put down any money. Vague scope is the single most common cause of inventor regret. The sample contract should specify deliverables, timelines, payment milestones, IP ownership, and termination terms.

If a firm refuses to send a sample contract until after you pay a fee, walk away. The contract is the product. You should be allowed to read the product before you buy it.

Question 5: Can I speak with past clients by phone?

Testimonials on a website are screened. Phone references are not. Ask for past clients whose projects had a similar scope to yours, and ask for their phone numbers.

When you call, ask each client three things: what did the firm deliver versus what was promised, were there any surprise costs, and would they hire the firm again. Listen for hesitation more than the answer itself.

A firm that refuses to share phone references behind “confidentiality” is using confidentiality as a shield. Past clients who are happy with the work will take a short call from a fellow inventor.

Question 6: Who designs my product, and who handles licensing? Is it one firm or several?

This is the most important question on the list. Some firms keep engineers and industrial designers on staff and run design, renderings, marketing, and licensing under one roof. Others are salespeople who outsource design to subcontractors you never meet, which means your files pass between strangers and each handoff loses context.

Ask whether design, CAD and engineering, renderings, marketing materials, and licensing representation happen inside one firm or across several. An integrated firm can answer this cleanly because the same team carries your project from concept to a license-ready package. Ask for the name and title of the person who owns the engineering work, and ask how the firm keeps a licensing conversation from over-promising what the design side can deliver.

Question 7: What are all the fees, and what does each one buy?

Some firms charge a design fee. Some take a percentage of a future royalty. Some do both. None of these is wrong by itself, but you need every fee on paper before you sign, and you need to know what tangible work each fee buys. A fee that buys renderings, CAD, and marketing materials is a fee for deliverables. A fee that buys “marketing” with nothing concrete attached is the FTC red flag.

Ask the firm to walk you through its pricing in plain numbers. A firm with clear packages can do this. As a reference point, Enhance Innovations publishes a $399 patent search as the entry step, a $1,499 provisional patent filing, and design tiers from roughly $4,000 to about $9,500, each tied to a defined deliverable set. Licensing representation is contingency-based with no upfront fee. Use that structure as a yardstick: every fee should map to specific work product.

Question 8: What is your refund or cancellation policy?

The 35 USC 297 disclosure requires invention promoters to state cancellation rights and refund policies. A firm with confidence in its own work ties cancellation terms to specific deliverables. A firm that takes 100% upfront with no refund language is asking you to fund its risk.

Ask for the policy in writing. Ask which deliverables trigger a cancellation right and which do not, and how the timeline works once a right is triggered.

Question 9: How long until I see the first deliverable, and what is it?

A 24-month engagement with no checkpoints is a 24-month engagement to nowhere. You should receive a first concrete deliverable within weeks, not months. Often that is a patent search result, then early concept renderings.

Ask the firm to walk you through a sample first deliverable from a past project. The sample should be specific to a real product, with real detail. A vague PDF with generic stock images is a tell. A low-friction first step, a paid patent search in the few-hundred-dollar range, tells you fast whether the firm produces real work before you commit to a full design engagement.

Question 10: How do you handle manufacturing sourcing and the path to market?

Many inventors hire a firm for help getting from a design to a real product. Ask how the firm handles manufacturing sourcing, whether it quotes tooling from domestic and overseas tool makers, and how it manages the handoff to a manufacturer. A firm that does this work can describe its process. A firm that says “we have hundreds of relationships” without describing any process is repeating marketing copy.

Also ask how the design connects to licensing. Companies license off renderings, CAD, and animation, so ask whether the firm can both produce that package and represent it to potential licensees, and how it keeps those two roles honest.

Question 11: What happens to my intellectual property if the agreement ends?

The contract should state in plain words who owns the patent, the CAD files, the renderings, the prototypes, the trademarks, and the marketing materials at every stage of the engagement and after termination. The default should be that you own everything you came in with and everything created from your idea.

Watch for clauses that grant the firm a perpetual license to your IP, a right of first refusal on future inventions, or automatic assignment of any improvement made during the engagement. Each is negotiable, and a firm that refuses to negotiate any of them is telling you how the relationship will go.

Question 12: How long has the firm been operating, and how does it work?

A firm with a real operating history is a different signal than a domain name registered last quarter. Ask for the year the firm was founded and how long it has run under its current name.

Ask how the firm actually works day to day. Modern product development is virtual-first: industrial design, CAD, renderings, and animation are produced digitally, and companies evaluate and license inventions off that virtual prototype package. A firm that describes a clear digital design process and an integrated path from concept to a license-ready package is describing how the work gets done now. Enhance Innovations was founded in 2010 and works from an office in Champlin, Minnesota, designing virtual-first and keeping design, engineering, renderings, marketing, and licensing under one roof. Ask any firm to describe its process in that kind of concrete detail.

The questions firms refuse to answer

Some firms will dodge questions 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11. The refusal is the data. A firm that will not put deliverables, IP terms, refund language, and fee structures in writing before you sign is showing you what working with them looks like once you do.

You are not being difficult by asking. You are doing the diligence the FTC has spent 30 years asking inventors to do.

A short script for the first call

You do not need all twelve questions in the first 15 minutes. Start with these five:

1. Can you send your BBB rating and complaint history?
2. Can I see a sample contract before paying anything?
3. What does your engagement actually deliver, and in what form?
4. Who designs the product, and is design, marketing, and licensing one firm or several?
5. What is your published 35 USC 297 success rate disclosure?

If those five answers come back direct, specific, and in writing, schedule a longer call for the remaining seven. If any of the five gets dodged, the longer call is not worth your time.

What to do with the answers

Put the answers in a single document. Compare two or three firms on the same twelve questions. Patterns become visible within an afternoon. A firm that answers all twelve in writing is worth a paid scoping step. A firm that answers six and dodges six has told you what you need to know.

FAQ

Q: How much should the first step cost?

A: An initial conversation should be free. A low-friction first paid step, such as a patent search, runs a few hundred dollars and should produce a real work product, a search result you can read and act on, not a vague memo.

Q: Is it normal for a firm to ask for an NDA before discussing my idea?

A: Yes, and you should also ask the firm to sign your NDA. An NDA before the first technical conversation is routine at any firm that respects your IP, which is one of the basics every inventor should understand about patents.

Q: How do I check the 35 USC 297 disclosure?

A: The disclosure is a federal requirement. Ask the firm to email you the current version. It must list the number of customers who received net profit and net license income from the firm’s services over the past five years.

Q: Should I hire a patent attorney before talking to invention firms?

A: Not for the first conversation. Start with a patent search so you know whether the space is clear, then read up on how to patent an invention. A firm can run that search for you as the entry step, and a patent attorney becomes useful once you move toward filing.

Q: What if a firm answers ten of twelve questions well?

A: Look at which two they dodged. If they dodged refund policy and IP ownership, walk. If they dodged BBB history and process detail, push harder before signing. The two questions a firm avoids are most often the two that matter most for that firm.

Q: How long should the diligence process take?

A: Two to four weeks. Schedule three firm calls, request twelve answers in writing, call references, and read each contract twice. The diligence is about 15 hours of your time. The downside of skipping it is the rest of this article.