Gary Goldstein

Benefits of Product Licensing for Inventors

This is where licensing can really benefit inventors with innovative ideas that would appeal to a number of people. Inventors can license their products to manufacturers with a solid market share and the ability to market these products to a target audience better than the inventor ever could.

Licensing is the transfer of copyright from one person or group to another person or group, where all parties to the transfer benefit in some way. The licensing of products is a common form of licensing and happens more than most consumers would think. Many of the toys, board games, action figures, and other products we see on the market have been licensed from their creators and manufactured and distributed by a large company. There are several reasons inventors would want to license their products to a company rather than taking care of the production and distribution themselves.

Licensing to a large company means the inventor will have more time to spend on creating additional products. Producing, testing, and distributing products is a time-intensive undertaking. Inventors who decide to manufacturer, market, and distribute their own products may find themselves spending more time on paperwork than on coming up with ideas for new products. It benefits inventors to license their creations to larger companies so that they can spend more time coming up with additional ideas that could also be licensed to other companies.

Licensing to another company means an inventor will not have to spend time marketing. Inventors are often very creative, innovative, and intelligent. However, these traits are best applied to creating new products and developing new ideas. Marketing products can be very time-consuming and can cause inventors to lose valuable time that they could be spending on new product ideas. Marketing is also something that is not easily done. Inventors are better served by turning marketing duties over to a licensee with extensive resources than attempting to do the marketing of their own products.

Licensing can give an inventor the upper hand during future negotiations. If an inventor takes advantage of the right licensing opportunities, their future products will have a much better chance of being picked up and distributed to a target market. For example, a board game creator may license his game design to Hasbro, a very popular game company. When future licensing opportunities arise, the inventor can show potential licensees that Hasbro licensed one of his products, giving him the opportunity to ask for more money or negotiate other benefits from the new licensee.

Unless you have the capital and capabilities needed to test, manufacture, market, and distribute your own products, licensing them to other companies can be an ideal way to profit from your ideas without losing time and money on unpleasant business tasks.

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