LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - February 23, 2011) - This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Post-it Notes invention and publishers are now courting its original inventor to tell the real story of how this small item has become an indispensable part of modern society. After completing a mass mailing of 2,000 actual working sample pieces to all the top stationery industry executives -- including 3M -- in the year 1974, inventor Alan Amron was selling and distributing samples of his newest creation at a trade show held at the Americana Hotel in New York City. Amron called this item "Press-on Memos," the same re-positional sticky notes the world has since come to know as "Post-it Notes." The public has been told this is a product straight from the innovative minds of the 3M company, as featured in their television ads. "Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth," states Amron.
Amron recalls 3M executives were impressed with his re-positional sticky notes product and its magical adhesive when he presented them with samples of both. He had worked out the technical details, including, but not limited to, the formulation of the re-positional rubber cement -- both adhesive enough to stick, but not so adhesive as to leave a mess. Amron supplied 3M executives samples and documentation of his Press-on Memos and his special adhesive, and in return, they gave him their business cards and told him he would be contacted. After no such contact was made, Amron called the executives. He was informed that after careful review, the creative 3M engineers felt the product could not be manufactured without gumming up the machinery and that production would be too expensive.
Amron thought the deal with 3M was dead in the water, but as he observed, 3M was more impressed than they let on. "3M employed their ingenuity and corporate might to not only solve the formerly insurmountable technical and cost problems, but also to claim the product was their own."
All this has been laid out in publicly available Court documentation, Federal Case Index # 97-CV-7281-TCP/MLO, Amron vs. 3M, Minn, Mining. An expensive legal battle between the corporate giant and Amron resulted in the inventor's voluntary dismissal of the case to receive a minuscule fraction of what Post-it Notes has made for 3M to date.
Although Amron has since invented numerous successful and well-known products, he feels the time has come to set the record straight for his invention "that almost every civilized person on the planet has used to make life a little more convenient."
Closer examination of the settlement reveals that while Amron is not entitled to any of the money 3M has made from "Post-it Notes," he is free to claim that he invented "Press-on Memos" and his special magical adhesive as well as the rights to license or manufacture the invention as he created it 37 years earlier.
There is nothing in writing preventing 3M from claiming they invented Post-it Notes, thus the corporate giant continues to publicly claim they invented Amron's invention. This is what Amron finds disturbing: "Life continues as normal for 3M, and they continue to be the mythological company of innovation they portray on television and glossy ads, and saying it often enough makes it true in the eyes of an information-overloaded culture."
The 62-year-old New York inventor is now coming out as the "original inventor" of the Press-on re-positional sticky magical adhesive and memo combination. "Turns out, this corporate giant can't legally prevent me from telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Amron's truth has been found so compelling that numerous publishers have been courting him for his story. He hopes his forthcoming book will trump what he calls "the great 3M marketing fiction."
Eileen Koch & Company is pleased to be providing all the PR consulting services for Alan Amron and aid the inventor in sharing his true story with the world.
For more information or to interview Alan Amron, please call Eileen Koch & Company, INC. (EKC) at 310.441.1000 or email Eileen at Eileen@eileenkoch.com. Please visit www.eileenkoch.com.
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Eileen Koch
Eileen Koch & Company INC.
310.441.1000