How to Sell Your Patent to a Company

If there is ever a need, it is important to know how to sell your patent to a company. A patent is a crucial legal document and affirmation that grants possession of an invention. To obtain revenue from the concept, it is necessary to promote the patent, license utilization rights, or market the product yourself. In other words, one can sell the patent.

How Are Patents Sold?

If you've got entrepreneurial zest and some advertising and marketing abilities, you may contact corporations directly. Creating an internet site, weblog, or promoting your patent idea via social media are some techniques to promote your invention. When promoting a patent, it might be helpful to solicit some unbiased recommendations from a lawyer familiar with patents in your subject area.

What’s My Patent Worth?

Corporations determine the value of the underlying invention outlined within the patent. They do this by considering whether or not the patent is properly constructed and by attempt to determine a way to extract worth from the patent. For companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, 70 percent to 80 percent of an organization's market capitalization comes from having certain intangible possessions, which embody nonphysical properties, such as patents, logos, copyrights, and different enterprise information and know-how.

Whenever you’re trying to determine how to use, and thus value a patent, it's important to describe “prior artwork,” which describes how your concept is novel by referencing all previous related patents and literature and methods that are completely different from yours. Frequent citations of prior artwork are an indicator that this a good patent.

How Are Patents Sold Outright?

Promoting your patent directly to a different firm allows you to quickly gain revenue from your concept. Brokers will market your invention to producers, sometimes taking a share of royalties for their services as soon as the patent is utilized. Focused advertising and marketing letters can be sent to corporations or representatives that may be interested in your product. This outreach also lets them know you have an interest in promoting your patent. Although full assignments that switch 100 percent of a possession in a patent are widespread, you can also transfer just a portion of the possession. Patent assignments can be partial. Examples of this approach include licensing your patent.

A patent lawyer can be helpful for drafting a full project related to your patent to make sure the settlement meets all typical regulations and legal matters. A few states have legal guidelines that require particular formalities when promoting or transferring patent rights, so check your local jurisdiction. All written paperwork regarding your patent should be properly put together and indicate the date the patent was issued, together with the title of the inventor and the official title of the invention. Boilerplate patent project agreements are available online and can be adjusted to your particular situation. At the final settlement meeting, both you and the purchaser sign all documents in front of a notary.

Your project should be recorded with the USPTO for it to take full effect. In the event you do not file for a patent within three months of its effective date, the patent cannot be offered to anybody else. Recording the project with the USPTO provides public discovery for the patent concept. Recording the project within the patent file permits a brand-new proprietor to make a motion for any patent continuing, corresponding to submitting a patent infringement lawsuit. The USPTO requires all recorded project paperwork to be written in English.

What Are Licensing Patent Rights?

Licensing involves transferring a part of your patent possession to another party and can be limited to a certain period of time, geographical region, or specific use. You’ll need to decide whether or not the license will be unique or non-exclusive. If the license is unique, you're granting the licensee sole rights to take a specific motion concerning your patented invention, normally just for a selected time frame or in a specific geographic area. Whenever you grant a patent license, you successfully agree that you will not sue the licensee for patent infringement so long as they function throughout the agreed-upon limitations of the license.

Take the next step to gain more information about how to sell your patent. Information and services are available by posting your legal need on UpCounsel's marketplace. All the top law schools, such as Harvard Law and Yale Law, are represented by lawyers on UpCounsel. Lawyers on UpCounsel average 14 years of legal experience, which includes representing companies such Google and Menlo Ventures.