Securing patents for your product designs can be a valuable investment. While you might think of the patent process as nothing more than just jumping through legal hoops, the fact is that there's far more to it than that. In fact, once you've secured patents for your product designs or ideas, you can actually use that patent as a revenue-building opportunity. Here are a few ways that your business could make money on your patents and their associated products or ideas.
Patent Enforcement
One of the most obvious ways of generating revenue from your patents is through enforcement. That means you'll need to have people on staff who are watching for instances of patent infringement, which is someone presenting your patented product or idea as their own. You can then work with a patent attorney to file a lawsuit against the infringing party. That lawsuit may give you the opportunity to get monetary damages if the infringing party cost your company revenue in the infringement.
Patent Sale
If the product or idea is marketable enough, you may be able to turn your patent into revenue by selling the patent. If there are companies in the marketplace that can produce the product and get it to market, they may be interested in purchasing the patent itself for a flat rate. They will then own all of the rights to the patent and the product. You'll get a lump sum for the purchase, but you'll lose out on any continuing revenue that would be generated from the sale of the product or concept.
Commercial Market
Another way that you can make money off your patented product or idea is by putting the product out on the commercial market. Whether you're selling to consumers or businesses, you'll have full control over the pricing, sale, and delivery of the product or service. You'll also get 100% of the revenue from those sales.
Licensing
If you're interested in maintaining your rights to the patent, but you don't want to put the product to market yourself, you can actually get the best of both worlds by licensing the product to other companies. You'll get a percentage of the royalties from every sale as well as a licensing fee.
Direct licensing is when you sell the rights to production directly to the company that will produce the product. Indirect licensing, on the other hand, occurs when you sell the rights to a management company that will then license the production out to other companies. You'll earn more in royalties from direct licensing, but it does require more involvement on your part. Contact a legal firm, like Lingbeck Law Office, for more help.
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