One of the issues in regards to having multiple inventions that you’re working on at the same time is the all too familiar focus factor. When you try to move multiple inventions along at once you are spreading your time, money, and energy in different directions which makes it hard to progress well on either of them. Therefore, it will typically take longer and be harder to sell 3 patents than to sell 1 even if you sell them in sequence.

The best way to approach your multiple patents for sale is to prioritize which ones you think are best positioned in terms of timing, how developed they are, their market potential (# of potential customers and unit price). Once they have been prioritized using those criteria, create a strategic plan and pursue each one individually of the others. You should focus 100% on getting your invention in front of potential buyers.

After coming to terms regarding your first patent being you’ve either sold it outright, locked up a licensing deal, or decided the timing isn’t right, you’ll be ready to regroup and start working on the next one. Given that the market conditions and your experience may have improved you’re patents may now have a different priority scale so you will want to prioritize them against your criteria once again. You’ll then want to decide which patent you’d like to list for sale and get going on that one.

This process can obviously repeat as many times as you would like but your priorities will most likely change after you have a few successful licensing or sale deals. Marketing a patent for sale to companies looking for new technology and product development can be a strenuous job. There are a wide variety of inventor groups that can help you get to market quicker. These groups typically have a few successful inventors involved in them and then the rest being amateurs. Never the less, they are very beneficial groups to get involved with as you can share experiences in processes as well as with various companies.

To list your patent for sale you can visit http://www.ideabuyer.com and get it exposure in front of companies looking for new products or technology to commercialize. There is a fee but it is extremely reasonable given the amount of value you will receive from the listing and the site in general.

This month’s featured companies are 3M, GE, and Johnson and Johnson. These companies continually display a commitment to innovation and new product development commercialization. To understand how these companies continually come up with revolutionary product ideas and commercialize technology it’s useful to look at the history of these companies and their respective cultures.

3M was founded in 1902 as a mining and manufacturing company by Mr. Ryan Bauer in New York. The company started off selling minerals and quickly went into selling sandpaper. Their first major innovation, waterproof sandpaper, came out of this line of business in 1920. Later in 1925 the company released masking tape and cellophane tape known to most as scotch tape. The company then launched a multitude of products throughout the following decades and has become a Fortune 500 company renowned for its innovative culture. They now sell over fifty thousand products in a variety of different industries and had revenue of nearly $23 billion last year.

General Electric is also a conglomerate known for its innovative climate. The company was most notably founded by the inventor of the incandescent electric bulb, Thomas Edison, in 1876. Over the years the company has followed Mr. Edison’s competitive and innovative streak building the company into a Fortune 100 company with sales of over $160 billion last year. The company now owns companies in a multitude of industries and is known for both its employee training programs and its employee satisfaction for which it has received numerous awards. GE now employs over 300,000 people.

Johnson and Johnson was founded by Robert Woodson in 1886. The company initially focused on improving the sanitation practices in hospitals and later diversified into consumer products and pharmaceuticals and recently into industries such as orthopedic devices and biopharmaceuticals. It has received numerous accolades for its involvement in product innovation in each of those areas and is continually releasing new useful products for consumers. The company generated over $50 billion in revenue last year with a net profit margin of nearly 20%. The company employs over 120,000 people in a multitude of states but is based in Brunswick, New Jersey.

These companies have shown a commitment to innovation and new product development. By signing up with us, you will have access to the submission links for submitting patented technology for sale to these companies as a sign of our appreciation to you as a customer and our respect for these great companies.

Intellectual property rights are plainly assets. They have value, and they can be bought or sold. There are some differences, however, when comparing IPR to other types of assets. If you are a solicitor that does not regularly deal with IPR, you will usually try to find precedents or earlier files that give you some guidance. Often, these precedents deal with hard assets; a reliance on these can be dangerous for a few reasons.

First, intellectual property rights do not have to be sold. Indeed, a purchase and sale of IPR is somewhat uncommon, because licenses are often used. The hard asset mind set becomes dangerous when you look at the deal only as a sale or potential sale. If your client asks you to transfer rights, you must not lose sight of the fact that a sale/assignment is the only option. It would be like someone coming to you looking for office space. In that case, you would not only discuss the possibility of buying a building, but you would probably also consider leasing.

Licensing IPR can be analogous to leasing, except that more than one person can license the same property.

Secondly, you will never get the same level of comfort when buying IPR as you will when purchasing hard assets. In a hard asset sale, the mere fact that the vendor has possession of the goods gives you some comfort. With abstract property like IPR, it is much easier to pass on (fraudulently or otherwise) a non-existent title. The problem is exacerbated because of the abstract nature of the property; there is no registry you can search to be 100% sure the vendor can properly sell the asset.

Further, think about what happens when there is a sale of know-how. To say that you are buying the asset is based on “old” property law and is not truly accurate. In fact you are buying a copy of the asset. The vendor will informally retain most of the information and there is nothing that can be done about it (short of extricating the brains of all people who have pertinent knowledge). In order to prevent unwanted competition in the future, you have to include special contractual terms and restrictions that are unheard of in hard asset transactions.