Two young girls in Connecticut are being sued and risk a $1 million judgment if they don't shut down their bright idea business.

Sophia Forino, 14-years-old, and her younger sister, Marissa, developed a crude prototype cloth that is a simple way to keep a smartphone or tablet clean.  “It's basically just like a microfiber cloth that I cut out and you turn it over. I put double-sided tape on it." Before filing with and receiving a trademark from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for their product "HypeWipes", the family conducted a Google search and paid to have an exhaustive third-party search done on domain names.

“So we're going through all the names, checking them off, and they were like, 'HypeWipes.' It was not taken; different variations of it weren't taken," Forino said.

Shortly thereafter, the girls received a threatening notice from Current Technologies Corporation of Crawfordsville, Indiana, the maker of the Hype-Wipe.

"We received an email addressed to Sophia and Marissa stating that 'We appreciate your ingenious idea and it's great to be an entrepreneur and all, but you're infringing on our product and we'd like you to stop selling it and remove it from the stores immediately, '" the girls' father, Rocco Forino, explained.

Current Technologies' product is a sealed bleach towelette called a Hype-Wipe, which is sold mainly to hospitals and companies for use as a disinfectant and cleaner.

In addition to the $1 million-dollar lawsuit, Current Technologies is demanding that HypeWipes take down its website, hand over its inventory, and it has sent letters to the girls' schools threatening to sue them if they sell HypeWipes as part of a fundraiser. Forino said he is willing to drop the name, and has already shut down the HypeWipes website, but he wants the company to sell off the $40,000 worth of remaining HypeWipes that all have the name printed on them.

“It's pretty aggressive, pretty tasteless, for a company that's not even in the same industry to attack a kid-owned company in that manner," said Forino. “It is very heavy handed. They didn't have to be as heavy handed."

According to news reports, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would not comment on the situation.

—Source: nbcconnecticut.com