American Inventor Forums

Here's what some anonymous person had to say:

"Janusz does not have any experience in design. American Inventor is not what
it claims to be.

I attended the audit in New York and I was surprised to find out that
American Inventor organizers were not looking for good inventions. The
"judge" (25 year old aspiring actress?) who audited me (with the other
"judge" who did not say anything) said: "Your invention is very interesting,
but this is not what we want to show." She asked me what was my profession
and if I had filed a patent application. This judge apparently did not to
allow any engineer to pass to the next level judges.

I realized that you need participants with a crazy and funny look, people
who will come blowing bubbles from the nose and releasing smoke from their
ears, because this is funny and this will give the show high rating. Maybe,
but for how long?

Thousands of people believing that you are looking for invention that will
be widely used in the USA have been defrauded. We waited 8 hours outside in
heavy rain, without toilet and another 6 hours inside to find out that they
do not need inventions. We disclosed to ABC tens of pages of confidential
information giving up our privacy (in my case you get the Provisional Patent
Application).
It looks that the show will not be able to find any real invention and will
be as big failure as was "Who wants to Marry a Millionaire." Janusz
Liberkowski, the last year winner (and the only participant with an
interesting idea), never tested his invention with a real child. He had a
good idea but forgot to provide a cover (without a cover the child's limbs could be amputated during an accident) and the size of the seat will
not allow it to be installed in a car. I do not believe that you will be
able to show him as somebody who is successful on the market
I believe that sooner or later an attorney will file a ****action lawsuit
against ABC in behalf of the audited participants who have been fooled.

I have two inventions, one of them a real "killer".".

So what do you think? I'm still going to watch since I'm interested.

I do remember hearing stories during Season 1 that the judges were not at the actual locations where people were lining up outside of. According to those stories,even the early episodes were filmed in L.A. and there was some panel on-location that would decide if someone got to go in front of the judges in L.A.

It doesn't look like they're doing this for Season 2. They've shown establishing shots of them constructing the sets in the different cities they've gone to; and in this past episode they've even shown the judges arriving on-site in the morning. Venturing a guess, the Season 1 policy was probably for budgetary reasons; and this year they undoubtedly have more money to work with.

The existence of pre-screening in & of itself shouldn't be surprising: if 1,000 people show up to a casting call, there's just not enough time in the day for the judges to see them all. I cannot defend or criticize the policies pre-screeners were using; I just watch the show like everyone else.

The comment that they are not letting any engineers through is not accurate. There was an engineer from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a highly respected NASA/Caltech institution, on the show in Season 1. His invention (the "Sit & Shave") was much less respectable than JPL, however.