Complaint Review: CARDINAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - CARDINAL LAW GROUP - Evanston Illinois

If you are a patents lawyer, registered patents agent or examiner, or a newly-licensed attorney looking for work, BEWARE if contacted by Cardinal Intellectual Property. This is a SHAM organization run by a bunch of Indian and Russian immigrants on Green Cards filing phony patent searches. You will typically be screened by an American named Brian Goddard (a/k/a "Dr." Goddard or Brian Goddard, Ph.D., another SCAM since he holds no higher degree than a bachelors in computer science from Notre Dame). Dr. Goddard will ask you a bunch of run-of-the-mill questions about patent searching. Truth be told, you could say anything short of Bozo-the-Clown told me to apply and you will be hired. You will then be outsourced to a group of so-called SAO's or "search approving officials".

These individuals -- none of whom is licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction mind you -- vary between benign neglect with little if any interest in the searches you file, to the very nearly pathologically obsessive, finding fault in such things as a misplaced comma or semi-colon in your opinion. The routine is basic "good cop bad cop" the reason for this is that Cardinal, despite all of their fine overtures of hiring you on for a "career", is merely farming out work to temporary attorneys who they pay pittance for a draconian level of work. Sometimes do the math after you start working for them, it will come out to less than $10 per hour maybe even less.

Cardinal typically hires and fires at will. One day, you will be receiving a litany of compliments and kudos from a variety of people, and the next, bingo -- a request for you to return "corporate property" (several pieces of plastic crap to enter restricted websites) and threats of "harassing" them. The method is to lure high-technically trained individuals into a job that they otherwise would not take, get them there while the work load is up, and when it drops, simply fire and terminate en masse. Blatant misrepresentation of a variety of websites, career boards and even in academia supports the false recruiting effort so beware!!! If you have another job offer, take it! You will be falling into a trap where you FOREGO OTHER BENEFITS TO WORK FOR THESE SCAM ARTISTS.

If you have been scammed by Cardinal as a former employee, all hope is not lost -- especially if you ARE a licensed attorney, as opposed to a phony one. One "SAO" paraded his credentials as if he was some kind of Arthur Miller on the Patents Bar until we checked his licensure -- turned out he was still a 2L in some third tier law school in Chicago. Start out by running their license on martindale.com, and REMEMBER: UNLICENSED PRACTICE OF LAW IS MISDEMEANOR IN IL., AND IN ANY EVENT EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN BY THE ABA. Write down names, numbers, copy emails and turn it into as many bar associations as you can, CA and IL are a good place to start: www.cabar.org. Report as many of them as you can remember to the Bar associations wherein they will likely seek licensure.

In California, for example, a letter from an attorney, duly licensed, petitioning against the Good Moral Character of a law student will be given every consideration, e.g., In re petition of Sujay Koneru, a matter currently pending before the Bar. My considered belief is that some of these Cardinal "lawyers" need to have their green cards revoked and get on their way back to Mumbai.

Stay away from these guys. Lest they foul up your resume, stall your career, waste your time, and postpone your life.

Brianna

New York, New York

U.S.A.