Innovative Designs Inc (IVDN)

[NevoTX]

GD, do you have any real *evidence* of the FTC's motives against IVDN, or are you just speculating? The FTC's mission is "protecting consumers and competition by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices...." (https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc) It is entirely within the FTC's purview to pursue action against IVDN on behalf of (or at least in support of) IVDN's competitors if the FTC genuinely believed that IVDN's claims about the R-value of INSULEX were deceptive. The fact that the FTC pursued this action against IVDN does not, to me, indicate that "the whole POINT of this case was to delay the entry of Insultex House Wrap into the marketplace."

Punitive damages are not available against government agencies according to a quick Google search, so that's not going to happen. (Also: punitive damages are assessed against the defendant, not the plaintiff.)

Compensatory damages against a regulatory agency for performing their regulatory duties? Also not going to happen. (Also: compensatory damages are awarded to the plaintiff, not the defendant. IVDN would have to sue the FTC to get compensatory damages. But again: getting compensation from a regulatory agency for regulating what they're supposed to be regulating isn't likely to happen.)

It's conceivable that FTC might be ordered to pay IVDN's legal fees, I suppose (standard IANAL disclaimer), but I highly doubt it. The FTC would have to have really screwed up for that to happen, and I don't see anything that would cause a court to conclude that.

I don't think the FTC is likely to pursue a case after it becomes evident they cannot win it. The FTC has lots of things to regulate and very limited resources with which do that. At some point, some manager at the FTC is going to cut their losses and focus the agency's resources on cases that they CAN win. Even if the FTC's motives ARE to screw IVDN in particular, pursuing an unwinnable case doesn't make sense once you get to a certain level of management, and I really don't think that IVDN's enemies are big enough to get the attention of senior management (to convince them to continue to pursue an unwinnable case) at the FTC even if, as you suggest, this lawsuit is all about intimidation by competitors. There are other companies out there that the FTC is going to be equally interested in screwing over. There's no way the FTC's hard-on for IVDN is bigger than it is for every other company the FTC regulates. I think you overstate the FTC's vindictiveness toward IVDN in particular; I think it's much more likely that the FTC saw this case as low-hanging fruit that they could easily win and it's not turning out that way. My opinion is still that the FTC is likely to drop the case once it is evident they can't win.

We're also not necessarily 3 weeks from IVDN filing their 52(c) motion. That's the deadline to file; IVDN can certainly file earlier. If they think they have a good case, I imagine (and this is speculation on my part; as I indicated I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV) that IVDN would want to file as soon as they can to encourage the FTC to drop their case as soon as they can.

As for the value of the patents... if IVDN's patents were worth millions of dollars, then any sane company who agreed with that opinion would have offered to buy those patents while IVDN was bleeding money and facing a lawsuit and therefore desperate for cash and likely to sell at fire-sale prices. That hasn't happened.

Nobody has said anything here to change my opinion, which is: the only thing that will make a significant change in the IVDN share price is when they start selling, and making a profit from, INSULTEX. Instead of doing that, the company has gone in the opposite direction and has stopped selling one of their two product lines, while the other product line has been essentially stopped by the FTC lawsuit. We own a company that has no revenue and large expenses for their legal defense. It would be nice if winning this case would suddenly change IVDN's market price, but I don't believe that's going to happen. A company that doesn't sell anything and that doesn't have revenue is just as worthless after a lawsuit as it was during the lawsuit.