Know Thy Business

The follow is an unedited conversation between me and someone I contacted about a possible business opportunity. Any clarification will be put in brackets [].

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 [Me: A post I replied to]

“I have a great oppurtunity for college students only. I need a rep from every college possiblef. Possible 25000 in just 2-3 months work.(depending on the size of your college). Message me to hear more”

What is the opportunity?

[Him]

It is a marketing venture. It is just going to be a new way of advertising on campuses. It is a plastic card that you will sell to students. The reason they will buy this card is because the representative from each university will go out to all there local book stores, restaruants, bars, hairshops, etc. and get major deals or discounts that are only eligible through the use of this card. People will jump all over it because if you can work something out with the book stores the card will pay for it self 20 times over. All you have to do is go get the discounts at the places to make sure these cards are well worth it. You can sell it to the stores as free advertisment, so they will jump all over it. Once you get these deals from these stores you send them to me, I will than post them on a website of which card holders can go to see what kind of deals they can get. It will be the same card at every university part taking so if someone visit a different college or city, they go to the website, click on the local college and find all the deals that they are able to offer.

 

[Me]

this is similar to what highschools do to raise money for the football teams

 

[Him]

exactly what it is, just for college students to save money, but i got a patent on it which didn’t exist before which enables it to be done for a profit as well. This just restricts any other profit organization from taking the idea. If you are interested let me know, there is alot of money involved

 

[Me]

how did you patent an existing idea?
to get a patent an invention must

1. be statutory

2. be novelty, meaning that the technology is not “anticipated” or identical to an invention disclosed in a single piece of prior art.

3. be useful, meaning that the invention must have a useful purpose

4. be nonobvious. meaning that the technology must be different enough from the prior art so as to not be obvious in view of the prior art

This is a good idea, it’s just not original… I honestly don’t believe you have a patent… but if you do please tell me your patent number and I’d be happy to market your idea.

[Him]

haha, well you can get a patent pending for around 300-400 dollars. I guess i throw the term around a little loose. I have filed papers pretty much saying that I have discussed this idea of marketing this on a college basis in public means. Therefore if a company, not being a non-profit organization such as fundraising, uses a similar idea to make money I am entitled to sue them for their existing and future business. For example now that i have discussed this with you, and you were to go out and replicate my business plan I could sue. My father is a lawyer so I am about as informed as I can be about this.I thought the samething. If you look up the NUS Card which is based out of the UK, this is the idea we are going for. The plan is for you to get 20-25% of all sales of the cards without having to claim taxes b/c you are simply an advertising expense for me. Let me know what you think. You can reprersent your college as well as other surrounding colleges. It is going to start in the fall and we may possibly just end up being a partner of the NUS card company. If you are not interested let me know as well bc i will be in search for another in your area.

 

[Me]

well while i know you wont get a patent (according to the Patent Cooperation Treaty ratified in the 1970’s) i do think it’s an excellent idea!
oh and you havent shared a business plan with me… you shared a vague idea that has been done in the past… so don’t threaten a lawsuit.

This has been done in the past however…
http://www.entertainment.com/
it is the exact same thing except it targets a general audience and is in a booklet format vs. a card.

And for taxes… anyone making ANY money from you will have to pay taxes, regardless if you count them as an advertising expense.
You can write off their salary off you earning but they cannot not claim taxes. Any income has to be reported to the Irs and if they get in trouble and say you said they didn’t have to pay taxes, the IRS will come after you too. So make sure you don’t tell anyone they don’t have to report.

I think you are on to a good idea you just need to get a solid business plan on paper. When you get all your information in line send it to me and i may be willing to represent a few large schools in the south east.

[Him]

I have explained to you how we are to generate cash flow and there was no threat involved it was an explaination. Entertainment.com is a booklet which is a huge difference, If you want to do something you can only use it once, you have to cut out the coupon, and it cannot be used on a national basis. Also they have not geared towards the college crowd, as the NUS card did. Entertainment.com is also very successful and the biggest complaint that I have heard is it costs to much, does not pay for itself fast enough, and they are just to lasy to go through the book to see what it is good for. I am going to complete my talks with NUS before I write up the business plan b/c that may be a much better oppurtunity for me. I look forward to doing business with you, but when it comes to law I know what my rights are, If this idea is replicated lawsuits will occur. The business plan is filed with the patent lawyer at the moment. It may be shut down, but you have compared it to several things, of which have small but yet very important differences to this business plan. You have not seen the set up of it yet, which is why I can see your skepticism, but with or with out a patent this will work. I honestly do hope you can be involved in this especially with your clear expertise in marketing. I need alot of help with this and am willing to compensate people accordingly. If you are able to help me on a greater level than just representatives than I would be honored. If you are honestly interested I can send you the business plan, and if you are willing to put in the amount of work I can give you a percent of overall business. Which honestly could be millions, if we can get reps to get these cards to pay for themselves fast enough, these could sell at 100s of universities. Or even sell them through the website. If you want to talk business, I think we should do it other than through messsages and without insulting eachother’s intelligence. I can give you my contact if you are interested. I just know with the right people and the right mindsets this can be a very successful company.

[Him Again]

And it turns out you were right i cannot get a patent on this, there is another company in existence doing the same thing or close. But us being students can really make this thing blow up. I am willing to give you a position in the company as marketing and a recruiter. We can talk percentages, but being in ownership seems more along your lines than just a representative. There is a card called studentadvantage card, but they have not done a good job of marketing this card. We will market this all over facebook for the partaking universities. We can sell it as paying for itself after buying 1 or 2 books. We can also sell these online. But the beauty of democracy is competition. We can market this way harder than that company and they will be the break.com and we will be the youtube. It is a very simple concept, we just have to find the mistakes in there company and fix them. Let me know if you are interested.

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So as you can probably tell I will not be joining this guy in his business. Besides the fact that he doesn’t have a business plan and wants to enter talks with an established business (HA), he also used passive-aggressive threats of a law suit. Later this kinda pissed me off… so I recommend everyone go and start this business at their local universities because he has NO case against you.