When licensing your intellectual property, you’re giving someone the right to use your IP in return for royalty payments. If it’s a patent, it can be made, sell, and distribute. If it’s a trademark, it’s rights to use it on their products or services.
Your IP is a bundle of rights, and unless you know what they are, you’ll wind up making one of the costliest mistakes in licensing – throwing everything into the licensing deal, including the kitchen sink.
I see this happen time and again, especially with inventors who thought their only IP was “just the patent.” They wound up losing money because they didn’t know they could get paid for their knowledge of how to make the invention.
But there’s an easy way to avoid this mistake. It’s called an IP inventory, and it’s basically a list of all the parts and rights that make up your IP. Remember, your IP is more than just a patent, trademark, or copyright. It also includes all the things you did to create it, protect it, and what you’re doing now to use it.
Here are 3 questions to help you start creating an inventory:
- Who Owns the IP?
- Is the IP protected, such as a patent application or trademark registration?
- Is the IP market-ready are still in development?
The more detailed an inventory you create, the better you’ll be able to really figure out all the different parts of your IP. It also helps you ensure you’ve got it protected, so you don’t wind up unable to stop an infringer (some using your IP without your permission) because you didn’t register it properly.
These are only 3 of over 20 critical questions inside the IP Inventory Organizer, one of the most important tools for licensing success. That’s why it’s part of The Licensing Toolkit.
If you’re serious about making money with your IP, you must use the right tools. The Licensing Toolkit is the only resource of its kind that teaches you the five essential tools for licensing success. With the Licensing Toolkit, you’ll avoid the biggest licensing mistakes and take the right action to create money-making licensing deals with your IP.
Click here to get The Licensing Toolkit.
