I have to admit, I was wong abought car signs!

[NicksPizza]

Registered Guest:

I’ll never buy mine from HTH. Something fishy that I don’t want to post about how they came into doing these - so (exactly) similar to the ones patented by Signlits. Another story of the little guy getting screwed.

1. Perhaps they are buying the signlits wholesale and selling them retail as a value-added to their existing line of signs??
2. Patents are not foolproof warrants to exclude everyone from the marketplace. Get a really good patent attorney to write your claims, or someone will find the way to vary your design and enter the marketplace right behind you.

 

[system]

Hello,

I was googling my company and I found this thread and thought I would respond. I was in the pizza industry for 10 years. Starting as a driver, then manager and finally owned my own pizza delivery restaurant. For that entire time there were always signs unlit.

HTH is not buying from me and reselling. I have tried to work out an agreement with them for the past 5 years.

I came up with this idea and began the patent process and prototyping. I contacted HTH and was told that they couldn’t be made to work and that there was no market for them. After 3 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars I had a unit that would stay lit for over 8 hours (10 1/2 actually) and that would turn itself on/off automatically and did not cost much more than a years worth of cords/bulbs/hassle (& still have unlit signs).

6 months after I opened for business and proved there was a market HTH came out with a unit that looked very much like an early prototype of mine. They had to stop selling because they had a 100% failure rate.

I do not know why they chose this route as I have been trying to sell them either a distributorship or the entire business, whichever way they wanted to go. Instead they have chosen to spend a pile of money reinventing the wheel.

I am currently working with Cassel Promotions/Autosox and we have a preliminary agreement. You can purchase signs with my cordless kits pre-installed. My units also retro-fit into HTH and Cassel signs.

I have been to multiple patent attorneys and they all say I have a strong patent. Patents are designed to give the inventor a monoploy for 20 years in order to recoup money invested in design/prototyping/start-up costs and to provide a potential profit if the inventor actually has made a valuable product. This is how innovation happens. Would anyone spend piles of money to make a new and potentially valuable product if they knew that when they opened for business that others would just come along and take the idea, flood the market, and crush the original inventor?

Sadly, even with a patent this still happens. I have put 5 years of my life and all of my money into this business. I will not give up EVER until my patent runs out. It’s the principle of the thing. I will also NEVER patent something again. I have piles of ideas sitting on shelves. I will take them to my grave.

Thank you for your time.

 

[perfect_pizzas]

HTH has great signs, good prices, and excellent customer service. We have been using them for many years. You can buy their signs with confidence. We bought one batch from cassel/autosox a while back and they worked fine as well. It doesn’t matter who you get them from, just that you get them and use them!