Inventions

Inventions are the backbone of industry. Without innovation and new products, the global marketplace grows stagnant and consumers reduce spending.  Inventions solve problems or introduce new cosmetic designs to an otherwise dated or boring product.

New individual inventors inevitably ask themselves how they can profit from their inventions. There are really two ways to make money from invention ideas.

One is to sell your inventions outright. Or rather sell the rights to your inventions.  This is done by first obtaining a legal claim to your inventions with a patent from your local governing office, in the United States, this is the United States Patent & Trademark Office.

After you have proper patent protection on your inventions you can then search for companies or investors interested in paying one cash sum for your patents.  This method is a great short term plan, but you risk losing money later if the idea is a great success.

The second, and most common, method to profit from inventions is to seek a licensing agreement from a manufacturer.  This entails marketing or “pitching” your inventions to interested manufacturers.  If a manufacturer agrees to license one of your inventions, they will negotiate for a percentage of the royalties from any of the product sold.

Finding a licensing manufacturer is a challenging task, but is often the best route as you will never have to completely “let go” of your inventions.  You will always be a part of the inventions development and profits.

Developing inventions is typically an arduous, but rewarding experience.  Even if your inventions experience moderate success, the excitement of bringing a new product to market is very addictive.  Being able to point at a product on a shelve and say “I invented that” is just plain awesome.