PostHeaderIcon Invention Marketing and Licensing for the Inventor

There are several less than forthright organizations that allegedly help individuals sell their inventions to industry.  In all my years of operating as a patent lawyer, I’ve got never return across a single person who ever used one of these organizations to effectively market or sell their invention.  However, I’ve got met many who successfully marketed their inventions themselves.

Before you take any steps to plug your invention, you should take a few preliminary steps.

Preliminary Patent Search – A preliminary patent search is generally a smart 1st step.  A preliminary search of varied patent offices will be conducted for a affordable fee (simply contact a patent agent/lawyer), and it’s even doable to conduct one free (see the US patent workplace at http://www.uspto.gov/)

Patent Application – Don’t publically disclose your invention until once a patent application is filed.  Publically disclosing the invention before filing a patent application will doubtless ruin the probabilities of ever being granted a valid patent.  After all, many Corporations will not even speak to you till you have got filed a patent application.

Prepare a Formal Info Package – You ought to prepare an informative and concise information package describing you, your invention and the potential market your invention reaches.  The package ought to embody color pictures of the invention, and a 1 page executive summary.

Prototype – It’s a lot easier to sell a product if potential buyers can see, touch and feel the product.  Building a working prototype is usually a key step in selling your invention.  In fact, some product are tough to prototype, in that case a non-operating mock-up might need to do.  In any event, produce the foremost professional prototype or mock-up you can.        

Get Financing – Building prototypes and filing patent applications require funds.  Finding that initial begin up funding is typically difficult; however, there are two gone through strategies, namely partnerships and incorporations.  A signed partnership agreement is one method for a few people to pool their financial resources into a project.  If several investors are concerned, then an incorporated company is a higher method.  Primarily, the corporate takes ownership of the invention and the investors contribute cash to the corporate in exchange for shares.  The number and worth of the shares will be tailored to suit the actual desires of the project.

Currently that we have a tendency to have controlled a number of the preliminary issues, let us examine the mechanics of selling your invention to a company.  The particular steps in the method are as follows:

1. Compiling a List of Potential Consumers – Finding a corporation that is willing to buy the invention is the foremost difficult half of the process.  It begins by generating a list of companies that may be curious about the invention.  You’ll use a business directory to get that list.  Business directories list corporations by the products they manufacture (or services they provide) and embrace basic info regarding these companies like their address, phone and fax number, and the name of the president (CEO or owner).  Appropriate business directories may be found within the business section of the local reference library.

2. Contacting Potential Buyers – Your list of potential consumers may embrace literally lots of companies.  You just call up each company on the list and raise them if they would be fascinated by receiving a solicitation for a replacement invention.  Then get the contact info about who in the corporate to send your information to.

3. Presenting the Invention to Prospects – Once you’ve got thinned out your list, the next step is to submit your info to each of the businesses on the list.  This could involve calling the folks identified to be the “contact” for brand new product ideas and telling them that you are sending them an information package concerning your product.  Your package ought to include a cowl letter and a 1 page synopsis of your product (as well as a image).  The information should be clear, concise and it must seem as skilled as possible.  Don’t try to overwhelm the recipient – you wish to impress them, not burden them.

4. Follow Up – Do not expect the prospect to come back to a fast call concerning the invention.  It might take a clear stage many months (even a year or additional) to form up his/her mind on a project.  You have to be patient.  It’s necessary to periodically follow up with the company however don’t “pester” the prospect.  Keep in mind, the individuals considering your invention are probably quite busy with several different projects – annoying them may do very little to speed the project up and could cause them to drop the project altogether.

5. Negotiations – If you discover a company that’s interested in selecting up the project, then be ready to negotiate the terms of the sale.  The key here is to be reasonable.  From my expertise, nothing kills off a possible licencing deal faster than an unreasonable inventor.  Realistically, the foremost you are probably to get may be a smart come back on your investment.  Requesting a smaller signing fee together with a modest royalty is way additional likely to get a signed agreement than holding out for a massive payoff.

6. Royalty Quantity – I am usually asked the query “how much will I sell my invention for”.  I don’t understand the solution; however, here are some rules that will help you figure out a cheap royalty rate.  First of all, attempt to negotiate a royalty that is countermined in to two parts, an initial signing payment and an annual royalty payment.  The initial payment ought to cowl most of your costs of the project.  The annual royalties should represent an quantity which is sufficient to represent a smart come on your investment without being a burden on the manufacturer.  The final “rule of thumb” is to ask for a tiny percentage (one% to 5%) of the net sales of the product.  It’s additionally doable, and in some cases advisable, to mend the annual royalty payment to an easily calculated quantity (e.g. $1.00 per unit sold).

Selling your invention to a manufacturer is doable but it is not easy.  How successful are you probably to be?  From my experience, individual inventors are so much more seemingly to successfully sell their invention by themselves then by hunting some invention promotion organization.  Like every business, the probabilities of success are a perform of your determination, information and willingness to require risks.

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