Last month, I received an inquiry from a subscriber. They wanted to know, “Anything about How to Assign my invention. How to market the invention when I only have a provisional patent. Anything else on inventions and the processes after the patenting.”

These questions cover a broad range and require more details than I could begin to answer in one newsletter. Consequently, I could only provide some basic options in this newsletter and suggest that they give me a call so that we might discuss their situation specifically.

• 10 Truths for Inventors

My experience as an inventor combined with my work as a coach for inventors has resulted in the following 10 truths that every inventor needs to know.

1. Ideas are a dime a dozen. (An invention’s value is directly related to how close the product is to commercial success.)
2. More inventors waste more money thinking that other people are going to take their product to market for them. (Moving an idea to commercial success is a long, time consuming, expensive process and you are the best person to do it. You have more knowledge, more passion and more at stake.)
3. Friends’ and relatives’ opinions don’t count! (Your product has no market value until you actually sell a product and collect money for it.)
4. Very few ideas sell themselves. (Inventing is easy, the hard part is to make it easy for every one in your channel of distribution to say yes and buy your product.)
5. You never have enough prototypes. (Never produce one of anything.)
6. Do not commit to large production runs until you have proven the commercial viability of your product. (Unsaleable inventory is expensive and a constant reminder of a mistake.)
7. Do not commit to production tooling until you have market tested enough working prototypes to feel comfortable that you will not have to make any more changes to the product. (The first or second designs are usually never the same as the finished product. Iterations of a product are necessary to finalize a saleable product.)
8. Don’t trust anyone to evaluate your product. See rule #3. (I once turned down a product that became a huge success when $6 per unit was spent on advertising a product that sold for $18. Remember the “Pet Rock” if you are old enough.)
9. Beware of people who want to produce an infomercial for you. (There are too many tales of inventors who lost $10,000, $20,000 or more with no results other than a promotional video.)
10. In most cases, you are going to need help moving your product to commercial success. (Look for resources that have multiple attributes. If you need financial support, try to find financing where you might also gain manufacturing or marketing know-how. If you need marketing help, try to find actual experience in marketing new products or your particular market. Then start with small steps until you develop a confidence level that you are getting value for your expenditure of time and money.)

• Three Options for Inventors!

There are three basic things that you can do with your invention.

You can sell the invention. This is where you assign your rights to the patent to someone else. Once you have sold the patent and assigned your rights, you have given up total control. The invention and the patent are no longer yours. This approach requires the least amount of investment of time and money and generally offers the least economic reward.

Your second option is to license your product to another entity. With this approach you will collect a royalty on product sold by the licensor. This approach includes many variables and can provide a little more control than selling your invention outright depending upon your licensing arrangement. Will this be an exclusive arrangement? Is the license limited by geography or market? How long is the agreement? Are there minimum quantities required? Is the royalty to be paid on the license to be a fixed percentage or will it vary with volume and/or time? These are just some of the issues to be negotiated with the entity that licenses your invention. Your expenditure of time and money is reduced and your return is potentially greater than an outright sale of the patent.

Your third option is do-it-yourself. This is the most difficult, the most time consuming and the most expensive of the three options. It is also potentially the most lucrative.

Basic Options

If you have a subject that you would like to see covered in future issues of “Taking Aim,” please send me an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .