Inventors back effort to tackle intellectual property thefts

By Chris Woodward
The Center Square

A five-time world champion jump roper, Molly Metz of Louisville, Colorado, created a jump rope in the early 2000s to help her go faster and win more records.

The hard work paid off.

“My jump rope was actually awarded and granted two U.S. patents,” Metz told The Center Square. “So, back in 2008, 2009, 2010, I was very inspired by my patents, and I started a manufacturing business for jump ropes, all around my intellectual property at the time.”

While the idea for and design of the product belonged to Metz, other people decided to sell the same thing. After going online, Metz saw her jump ropes “being sold by Amazon sellers and little mom-and-pop stores.” Later, Metz saw them being offered by distributors in India and China.

Today, Metz, who describes herself as a victim of intellectual property theft, supports new federal legislation that would protect inventors like her.

“It’s very overwhelming when you’re the inventor, the creator, and you’re trying to build a business, and then you find out all these people are stealing your property,” Metz said.

The patenting process took about four years and $40,000. Metz also poured $350,000 into molds, employees and a facility to make her product.

Metz said that from 2015 to 2018, when she saw over 150 companies stealing her invention, she got an attorney and began to fight. It was a success. Metz was able to stop every one of those infringers through licensing deals. However, Metz later found herself in an administrative court that was set up by Congress in 2012 through an intellectual property law, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The administrative court or Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated both her patents.

“I lost everything,” said Metz. “I lost all my licensing deals. I had about 40 employees at the time. I lost them. All because of a bad law.”

Today, Metz is still in the jump rope business. She and her husband, Dirk Tomsin, chief operating officer at US Inventor, advocate for inventors. One example is Soo-Jin Yang of Las Vegas. The CEO and founder of illumino said she’s also the victim of intellectual property theft.

A licensed manicurist, esthetician and cosmetologist, Yang puts on eyelash extensions daily. To do that more effectively, she created a special LED lash tweezer device and an LED curing method.

The inspiration for her method and product began with a client whose lashes never lasted and who often teared up during the service.

“I was trying to figure out how I could help solve her issues,” Yang told The Center Square. “I wore braces and I had clear brackets, and they used an LED to bond the bracket to my teeth, and it was much faster. And I realized maybe we could use a light to polymerize the glue faster, and that’s how the invention came.”

Yang started in 2012 and launched a certified safe product in 2019. Yang has since noticed the same product for sale “from quite a few so-called vendors through Alibaba that are all from China.” In each case, Yang said, vendors are copying and selling her product.

“It took many years to create a product that was safe and made in the U.S.A. and that has globally recognized certified reports to go along with it,” said Yang. “The overseas dupes or knockoffs, they’re just selling things with fake safety reports, and there’s no checks and balances for what’s coming from China.”

Yang recommended consumers do their homework and make sure that what they are buying is legit. “People should second-guess if that product is truly what they’re supposed to be using.”

Yang, who still has her patents, tried to get assistance from the Nevada Board of Cosmetology. She also notified certified testing groups about fake safety reports floating around and being shared. But Yang’s efforts were unsuccessful.

Yang’s luck improved when she recently traveled to the U.S. Capitol to meet with federal lawmakers about intellectual property theft.

She found support from U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie. The Kentucky Republican co-authored two bills with a Democrat, U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio.

One of their bills, HR 5819, is a reintroduction of the Balancing Incentives Act.

A press release from Kaptur said the bill “amends U.S. patent law to require a patent owner’s consent before anyone can file a petition to challenge the patent” through reviews by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

“This simple yet powerful change ensures that inventors, especially individual creators and small businesses, are not blindsided by costly legal challenges that can strip them of their intellectual property,” Kaptur said.

Metz and Yang favor this measure, as well as HR 5811. Also known as the Restoring America’s Leadership in Innovation Act of 2025, the legislation aims to reverse what Massie called “harmful changes to patent law that arose from Supreme Court rulings and the enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act.”

Massie, who holds 30 patents dating back to 1995, said he’s pleased to have the support of inventors such as Metz and Yang.

“What I’ve noticed over the years is a gradual erosion of the presumption that a patent means that the inventor owns the idea, and the erosion has happened because of bad legislation from Congress, because of inaction of the Supreme Court decisions, so I decided to introduce a comprehensive bill to fix those problems,” Massie told The Center Square. “The changes have made it harder for inventors to get injunctions against infringers and harder to defend their own patents in court, in real courts.”

Patents, trademarks and copyrights are all different types of intellectual property. Each covers a different aspect of a creation.

For example, Yang said patents protect the invention, the technology, device, system or method. Yang has two utility patents – one for her LED lash tweezer device and another for the LED curing method.

“I also got three design patents to cover the style shape of my invention,” said Yang. “This is why IP [intellectual property] can get so expensive, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office doesn’t help us really protect our IP. They just let these scumbags copy our stuff, and we have to pay lawyers to go after them!”

Trademarks protect the brand identity, such as Yang’s business name and logo (illumino®) or product name (Lynk-Gel®). This filing is separate from the patents.

“Copyrights protect creative works, like my training manuals, course materials, images, and other content,” said Yang. “These require their own separate filing as well.”

Bottom line is, Yang said, a patent alone does not cover everything.

“Each category protects a different part of the business, which is why most innovators file more than one type of IP.”