Local Wins $25k in FTC Invention Contest to Block Robocalls

A Port Jefferson man has been awarded $25,000 for a nifty invention that thwarts robocalls.

"Nomorobo," an invention created by Aaron Foss, was one of two winners named in a competition launched by the Federal Trade Commission designed to find a solution to keeping away those calls that nobody wants to hear.

Foss – a freelance software developer whose Twitter account bio aptly notes that "I make things work" – designed a platform that utilizes phones' simultaneous ringing function, which detours calls to a second telephone. Instead, the function will route calls to a computer-based software that "within a few milliseconds of a call coming in, will identify the call as a robocall" and if so, pick up the phone and hang up.

The FTC opened up the competition last year, because, according to its website, "as technology has continued to advance, the need for new and innovative ways to block these illegal calls has increased." About 200,000 complaints are logged to the FTC each month, and over 800 submissions were entered into the contest.

• Click here to watch a video of the press conference announcing the competition's winners.

Foss said that developing Nomorobo took three months to complete between his day job. Moving forward however, implementing the software so the public can put it to good use remains a more challenging next step. Rights to the invention remain his own, so he plans on using the $25,000 reward as seed money to bring the idea to market.

"The technology part of this is relatively easy," he said. "But getting to adoption, how to get the word out, that's harder. It would be great to partner with a phone company service so someone could sign up on a per-month basis, much like anti-spam or anti-virus coverage."

• Check out the attached YouTube video about how Nomorobo operates.

According to Newsday, Foss also owns patents to a couple of other devices, one of which helps doctors track chemotherapy treatments for their patients, and another which makes dipping containers for buffalo wings.

He has lived in Port Jefferson for the past eight years and is a 1996 Sachem High grad, and added that one of the fun parts of winning the contest is the fact that the technology is something that has been marketable on such a wide platform. Wednesday, he had interviews lined up with media outlets from Texas to Canada.

"Everyone gets those annoying robocallers," he said. "And it's kind of nice to hear from everybody talking about how much they can't stand them. It's been really exciting."