While selling a patent is not necessarily easy, it is quite simple compared to licensing. Selling a patent is basically giving up all future rights to it for a set price. Licensing, on the other hand, can take on many other, different forms depending on what you and the licensee want to get out of the arrangement. Therefore, it pays to be “in the know” about what your options are before diving headlong into the process. In this article, we will offer 10 tips on how to license a patent in a way that meets your needs.

1) Realize what a license is and demands of you
There is no doubting the lucrative potential of patent licensing, but you should be aware that it is a different animal than selling your patent. Licensing is not always the “set it and forget it” deal that many licensors hoped it would be. Typically, you will need to exercise diligence in making sure that your licensee(s) are performing the way they agreed to. If they are not, you will need to take action and revoke the license. This should not scare you away. Rather, it is only being mentioned so that you approach the process with realistic expectations.

2) Avoid general “best efforts” clauses
One benefit of licensing a patent is being able to stipulate things a licensee must do to retain his license. However, there is one type of stipulation that you should avoid: a vague “best efforts” clause. As an article called “Patent Licensing” explains, courts tend to interpret these clauses in problematic ways:
“Both parties should avoid this clause in favor of more objective standards. The courts may interpret such a clause to require the dedication of all of the licensee’s resources towards exploitation of the licensed patents, when realistically most licensees will have a number of other significant business endeavors to support.”
The way around this dilemma leads us to tip 3.

3) Use specific milestones and obligations
What you want to do is set specific, numeric goals and milestones that the licensing agreement will be contingent upon. As the aforementioned article states, the key is to be objective in setting these requirements.
“The milestones can be anything definitive that the licensee feels it can realistically meet in the stated time frame. For example, the licensee may be required to obtain an approved New Drug Application with the Food and Drug Administration by a certain date. Licensees should be aware that there is an implied obligation to exploit the licensed patent on the part of an exclusive licensee.”

4) Set those milestones for a reason
While it is important to have specific milestones, they must also not be arbitrary. It may sound nice to tell a licensee “You can only keep your license if you do a million in sales the first year”, but this is probably not realistic. Instead, do some market research on what it would be reasonable to expect. You want to make sure both you and the licensee feel comfortable with the performance obligations being written into the agreement. After all, the goal is to capitalize on the patent, not one-up each other.

5) Set royalty requirements
One alternative to, or supplement of, performance obligations is to use royalty requirements. Simply put, these are stipulations that say “I can revoke this license unless you pay me X dollars in royalties.” The royalties can be paid monthly, annually, or semi-annually, but the idea is that unless you get the dollar amount stated, you can revoke the patent license. This can be useful if you want further assurance that your financial needs will be taken care of. It is a way of ensuring that no matter how the patent licensee performs, he is responsible for paying you a certain amount.

6) Clearly spell out how and when those royalties will be paid
Just as important as specific and non-arbitrary obligations is ensuring that you both know how and when they are to be fulfilled. Few patent licensing issues are thornier than when there are misunderstandings about payment schedules. Therefore, you should take special steps to avoid these hassles. The earlier quoted article continues:
“The agreement should clearly specify when reports are required to be made and when royalty payments are due. Payment needs to be made in conjunction with a quarterly or semi-annual accounting report on the royalties received by licensee. Licensors usually reserve the right to annually audit the records, at their expense, to be sure they are receiving the proper amount of royalties. Licensors are advised to also include a provision to audit for a period of time after termination of the license to be sure they have received all the royalties that are due and owing to them.”

7) Get legal advice for your agreement
As you can see, all of these performance obligations, milestones, and royalty requirements can seem a bit overwhelming if you are new to the field. A patent attorney is the best person to consult when this happens. They can ensure that your contract is on the up and up, that it can be enforced down the road if necessary. While you may balk at paying their high fees, consider it a worthwhile investment. You need to know that you can enforce your agreement if you have to and only a patent attorney can provide this assurance. They can warn you if the terms in your deal are heavily favorable to the licensee.

8) Don’t get greedy
This rule applies to both patent sales and licensing. If you are in a position to get some nice, life-supporting residual income from a licensing deal, don’t kill it by being excessively greedy. The idea is to score some nice income from your patent, not suck the other party dry. Remember: pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered.

9) Specify a length that you are comfortable with
Patent licensing agreements can be as long or as short as you and your licensee want them to be. Therefore, you should take the time to think of a length that suits you. If you want to someday take the reins and capitalize on your patent, an agreement length of 5 years or less might be what you want. On the other hand, if you want to just sit back and cash the royalty checks, you might want to go for as long a term as the other party will agree to. The key is to set this length consciously based on your true goals.

10) Decide on an exclusive or non-exclusive license
There are two different types of patent licenses: exclusive and non-exclusive. An exclusive license is what most licensees will prefer, since it grants them “exclusive” rights to capitalize on the patent. It ensures them some protection against competition and also allows them to enforce violations of the patent. Non-exclusive licenses, then, let you, the licensor, keep the right to license the patent to someone else. Decide which of these two licenses you are most comfortable with and try to get the licensee to go along with it.

Eric Corl is the President of Idea Buyer LLC, a new product development company that owns and operates IdeaBuyer.com- The Online Marketplace for Intellectual Property.  The site gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email him at EricCorl@IdeaBuyer.com.

License a Patent

 Licensing a patent is considered one of the most viable means of commercializing it. In short, a patent holder seeking to license his patent will not exploit it himself. That is, he will not try to create, market, and sell anything based on the patent. Instead, he will market the patent itself to those who do wish to take those steps. Any variation of this is known as “licensing a patent.” However, it is best to know some facts about licensing patents before one rushes to do so, or assumes that licensing is a “set it and forget it” means of cashing in on their intellectual property.

 Legally speaking, you have licensed your patent when you (the licensor) grant exploitation rights over your patent to a licensee (the person you are licensing it to.) “Exploitation rights” simply means the right to create, market, and/or sell something based on what that patent protects. A license of this nature is also a legal contract, and that contract is what will spell out in concrete terms precisely which exploitation rights are being granted. These include any performance obligations the licensor might demand of the licensee. This means that if any performance obligations are included in the contract (ie, “You must produce X number of sales by the year X.”), and they are not met, this could lead to the license being terminated in its entirety.

 In this context, a license is also revocable – ie, cancellable – if certain terms and conditions are not met. This is a common characteristic of legal contracts in general, with special ramifications for patent licenses.

 The only way to grant someone irrevocable exploitation rights, it should be added, is to assign them the patent. Assignments, however, are permanent. They entail the sale or outright transfer of the patent by the assignor to the assignee. An in-depth exploration of patent assignments is beyond the scope of this article, but just know that they are an option if irrevocable exploitation rights are something you seek.)

 Now that you know what a patent license is and what they involve, we can move on to a discussion of how to capitalize on them financially. The primary means of doing this is to seek royalties from the licensee in exchange for using your patent. Royalties, typically, are paid over the life of the patent. The amount and frequency with which royalties are paid from licensee to licensor must also be spelled out in the license agreement. In this way, the licensor is protected. If the licensee fails to pay the royalties that were agreed to, the licensor can revoke the patent license and retain sole exploitation rights over it.

 Here is an example of how this might work in practice. Let us say you licensed your patent to someone in exchange for royalties amounting to 20% of all sales resulting from your patent on a yearly basis. If your licensee creates something from the patent that results in a profit of $100,000, you would be entitled, by the terms of your license agreement, to $20,000 of that profit. If the licensee failed to disburse those funds to you, he/she would be in violation of the agreement and you could then proceed to revoke the license.

 (Again, the danger with using patent assignments over patent licenses is that failure to pay royalties will not revoke the rights you have already assigned. You will be free to litigate for the lost royalties, but this is often an expensive and lengthy process. With a patent license, the matter is more or less open and shut. Failure to pay royalties means revocation of the license.)

Now, some more elaboration on performance options is in order as well. Performance options are a form of protection for the licensor. They are a way to ensure that the licensee does not “sit on” the patent, ie, do nothing with it and thereby starve the licensor of the ability to capitalize on it elsewhere. There are two basic types of performance options that can be written into a patent license agreement.

 The first kind is pre-market entry milestones. In short, these are obligations that the licensee is expected to achieve or meet. They could include things like bringing the invention under a trial or validation process, creating a working prototype, satisfying pertinent regulations, progressing through any clinical trials that exist, and so forth. These performance obligations ensure that things move along at a steady pace without any income-killing lag in activity. It prevents the licensee from become inactive as a rights holder.

 The second kind of performance obligations are post-market entry sales targets. These take effect once the invention is out of the development stage and available for sale on the market. Very simply, such obligations include sales targets, profit margins, or any other measurable goal tied to the performance of the idea in the free marketplace. These obligations give the licensee concrete goals that he must attain and give the licensor a bare minimum of royalties that he can expect to reap.

 In closing, licensing a patent is one of the most reliable ways to capitalize off of one’s intellectual property. By working with a patent lawyer to draft a rock-solid license agreement and choosing your licensee(s) carefully, you will greatly increase your chances of success.

Earl Bennett of GT Seat Belt Extenders

Persistence, patience, and perspiration have paid off for long-time inventor, Earl Bennett in the form of his latest product, the GT Seat Belt Extender.

Bennett says his inspiration for inventing comes from Willy Wonka. “Wonka said inventing is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple. That’s 105% my way of thinking”.

After years of tinkering and inventing, Bennett has produced a product with mass appeal that is moving off the shelves - a seat belt extender. Bennett solved the problems that other similar products were having and built the first prototype in 2004.

Bennett’s seat belt extender initially caught the attention of an entrepreneur who backed the original order that is now being distributed through KOI Automotive, as well as directly to consumers on gtseatbeltextender.com.

While the product’s original purpose was to eliminate size and shape discrimination of people, it has caught the attention of police officers and firefighters who have began buying them by the case. These professionals are a large contribution to the already 70,000 in circulation.

The high response KOI has received about Bennett’s product has forced the company to hire a full-time employee to focus solely on the GT Seat Belt Extender.

With another order for 40,000 units in place, Bennett’s infomercial below has begun airing on Spike TV and Lifetime Television in test markets in preparation for national airing.

Click Play to view the commercial:

Sales are expected at more than 10 million units next year, leaving Bennett with a pleasing return well over 100%.However, Bennett doesn’t plan on stopping. “Right now I’m publishing a book - The Legend of Bucky the Beaver. It’s an inspirational book for children that teaches them never to give up.”Bennett’s advice for inventors is the same as it is for children in his new book, “If you have something that you believe in, then take it all the way.”

You can order a seat belt extender at gtseatbeltextender.com. Investors are also encouraged to contact Bennett if they are interested in future projects.

His contact information is available upon written request to info@ideabuyer.com.

Written by Lindsey Yeauger, Director of Communications, Idea Buyer, LLC.
IdeaBuyer.com- The Online Marketplace to license and sell patents and ideas.
IdeaBuyer.com/news – Patent Licensing and Sale Tips

The centerpiece of any patent sale or licensing negotiation is a powerful presentation. In this presentation, you will be making the case for why this person or company should want your patent. Obviously, you will want to make this as compelling as possible to justify the time spent negotiating and get that patent sold. But how should you go about it? In this article, we’ll offer 10 tips for making your presentation sing.

1)      Use numbers to make your presentation come alive

When it comes to selling intellectual property, nothing sweetens the deal like numbers promising future success. If you can quantify the size of the market your patent will serve, expected sales, profit margins, and the like, this will be an immense benefit. Numbers speak louder than words in this case because they make the prospects of success real for the person you are presenting to. For this reason, use numbers early and often – and be prepared to prove their validity.

2)      Eliminate hype from your presentation

If numbers make a great presentation, hype kills it. There is simply no reason to “puff up” your presentation with words like “awesome”, “amazing”, or anything else you would picture a sleazy used car salesman saying. These tactics do not make your presentation more compelling. They just make anyone with common sense suspicious of what you are trying to put over on them. Therefore, avoid this method of organizing your presentation.

3)      Deliver your presentation in order

As with anything else, it helps if you deliver your organization in a logical sequence, with each slide or point building upon earlier ones. Therefore, you do not want to start talking about projected sales and profit margins before explaining what the patent covers. While this sounds obvious, many patent holders overlook hierarchy in their zeal to make their patent look appealing. Do not make that mistake. Take the extra time to work out what should be said when, and you will be better off.

4)      Avoid “happy talk”

In his landmark text “Don’t Make Me Think”, Steve Krug warns web designers against using what he calls “happy talk.”

“A lot of happy talk is the kind of self-congratulatory promotional writing that you find in badly written brochures. Unlike good promotional copy, it conveys no useful information, and it focuses on saying how great we are, as opposed to delineating what makes us great.”

This applies to patent presentations as well. Bombarding the other party with irrelevant information makes a sale or licensing less likely, because he has more information to process. Instead, you want to keep the other party focused only on what matters, which leads to tip number 5.

5)      Focus on what matters

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? And yet, so many presentations veer off the path of relevancy into the blind alleys of pointlessness. The best way to define the difference in this case is to use an example. Here is an example of something you would want to focus on in your patent presentation.

“Our idea was featured in Time Magazine’s 100 Coolest Things of the Year special.”

This is worth focusing on because it demonstrates a genuine public interest in what your patent covers and has to offer. Now, by contrast, here is something you probably would not want to focus on in your patent presentation.

“It took six months for the patent to be approved.”

By staying laser-focused on the benefits of buying or licensing your patent, you give the other party less to think about. You can lead them down the road to a painless, mutually beneficial sale.

6)      The shorter, the better

There will be some exceptions to this rule; for example, a patent covering a way to automate open heart surgery is going to take more than a few slides to cover. However, for most patents, you should strive to keep your presentation as short as you can. In addition to making sure you don’t lose the other party’s attention, a short presentation exudes confidence. It shows that you do not need to belabor the same old points over and over to prove that you have the goods.

7)      Answer the tough questions

Smart negotiators can tell when a presentation has conveniently glossed over the tough questions. When it comes to selling or licensing a patent, those tough questions are likely to involve competition, costs, and similar concerns. You should take a proactive approach and anticipate the other party asking those questions. Do not wait for him to ask, though. Instead, answer them right in the presentation. How can X competitor be dealt with, or the worst-case scenario of Y cost going up? Doing this makes you come across as more honest, which helps the other party trust in everything else you are saying.

8)      Rehearse your presentation before giving it

If you plan on narrating your presentation (if it’s in PowerPoint, for instance) it definitely pays to rehearse it on someone else first. This should be relatively simple; just ask your partner, spouse, or friend to sit down and listen to you give your pitch. Undoubtedly, you will make some mistakes, or think of something you wish you included in the presentation during this rehearsal. Fortunately, you will be able to go back and make changes then, when messing up doesn’t matter, instead of during the presentation when it could ruin the deal. The result will be a finely tuned and polished presentation that delivers the message you want it to.

9)      Consult your patent attorney before delivering your presentation

This is just a precautionary step to make sure you do not make any legal guarantees or statements that could be held against you. A patent attorney can tell you point blank whether something you want to say constitutes a performance obligation, forward-looking statement, or the like. Generally, you want to avoid making these kinds of statements in the event that something goes wrong later on.

10)  Close your presentation by explicitly stating what you want to happen

What is the point of your presentation? Whether it is to sell or license your patent, you should wrap things up by saying so. This can be stated in any way you want, so long as it gets that point across. Something like “For all the reasons given, we think it’s clear that buying/licensing this patent would benefit everyone involved” is what you want to shoot for. This integrates everything you said in your presentation toward the main goal that you have in mind – getting that deal done.

If you can implement these simple tips into your presentation, you will greatly increase your odds of selling or licensing your patent.

Every inventor knows the dreaded feelings of a creative dry spell. It is the pit of dread that comes with feeling like you are totally out of new ideas, that you could not innovate your way out of a paper bag, that you are creatively burned out. Ayn Rand called this anxiety “the squirms”, and it is well-known to any creative person.

So how do you wriggle out of the squirms and back into creativity? Brian Clark, creator of the popular website CopyBlogger.com, offers some helpful clues in his article “Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Roadblocks to Creative Thinking?”

The first roadblock Clark discusses is following the rules. He explains:

“One way to view creative thinking is to look at it as a destructive force. You’re tearing away the often arbitrary rules that others have set for you, and asking either “why” or “why not” whenever confronted with the way “everyone” does things.

This is easier said than done, since people will often defend the rules they follow even in the face of evidence that the rule doesn’t work. People love to celebrate rebels like Richard Branson, but few seem brave enough to emulate him. Quit worshipping rule breakers and start breaking some rules.”

SRC: http://www.copyblogger.com/mental-blocks-creative-thinking/

Two real-life examples of this spring to mind immediately. Ten years ago, people probably would have scoffed at the idea of Wikipedia.com. “A collaborative encyclopedia?”, they would exclaim. “Impossible! It’s never been done. It will be rife with errors – if people bother to edit it at all!” Well, today Wikipedia not only exists, but is one of the most trusted sources of information in the world. In addition, its accuracy rate is almost as high as Encyclopedia-Britannica.

Another example of an invention that whose creator “didn’t follow the rules” is Digg. Prior to Digg, news websites virtually all had moderators and anchors who decided what news got seen. Digg changed all that by creating a socially-driven system where users voted on news and thus determined what was popular enough to be on the front page Today, people pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars to consultants who promise them that they, too, can be seen on Digg’s homepage. All because the creators of the site went against the conventional rules.

Another roadblock Clark identifies is being practical. He argues that while practicality is important when it comes time to deliver the goods, it can lead us to idea killing self-censorship when we are just brainstorming.

“Like logic, practicality is hugely important when it comes to execution, but often stifles innovative ideas before they can properly blossom. Don’t allow the editor into the same room with your inner artist.

Try not to evaluate the actual feasibility of an approach until you’ve allowed it to exist on it’s own for a bit. Spend time asking “what if” as often as possible, and simply allow your imagination to go where it wants. You might just find yourself discovering a crazy idea that’s so insanely practical that no one’s thought of it before.”

The problem with practicality is that too often, we let established conventions define what is “practical” to us. In this way, any new and original thought is instinctively labeled “impractical” because it has not yet been done. Instead, do your best to banish “practical” from your vocabulary during creative brainstorming. You can apply the demands of practicality later, after you decide if you like an idea or not.

A third roadblock Clark talks about is the fear of being wrong. This is ingrained in all of us. As humans, we never like to be wrong on some issue because it makes us feel like failures. However, this is not necessarily true. Even the greatest minds in history have used failure and mistakes as stepping stones to technological discovery:

“We hate being wrong, and yet mistakes often teach us the most. Thomas Edison was wrong 1,800 times before getting the light bulb right. Edison’s greatest strength was that he was not afraid to be wrong.

The best thing we do is learn from our mistakes, but we have to free ourselves to make mistakes in the first place. Just try out your ideas and see what happens, take what you learn, and try something else. Ask yourself, what’s the worst that can happen if I’m wrong? You’ll often find the benefits of being wrong greatly outweigh the ramifications.”

The common theme in all of Clark’s roadblocks is that if you want to be creative, you shouldn’t self-censor. Instead, let creative brainstorming be a time of open, free flowing ideas. Ask yourself bold new questions and don’t feel like you need to come up with exact answers right away. It may turn out that you are onto something huge - something you may have cast aside by being unnecessarily stringent.

When it comes to product marketing, everyone thinks they are an expert, but few can produce results. Why is this so? Most of the problem comes from marketing books, seminars, and courses that detract from the heart of marketing: translating features into benefits. Much of today’s marketing is based on product hype . However, the simple truth of the matter is that people buy things to gain pleasure or avoid some sort of pain. It is critical to understand this as it is the supporting motivation for every purchase no matter how little or large it may be. Think about the last two items you purchased. Why did you buy them? You can boil every purchase down to gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.

That being said, there are four key tips to better connect with your customers:

1) Use terms your customer can relate to, not industry jargon.

This point is illustrated eloquently by Jay Cross of the popular online marketing blog PronetAdvertising.com. In his article “Speak Your Customer’s Language”, he stresses that marketers often become so entrenched in their fields that they believe everyone else knows as much as they do.

“As businesspeople we develop tunnel vision regarding our products. The better parts of our days are spent actively working in our fields. We are more experienced and well-read than most ever care to theorize about. This leads us to use super-specialized language that doesn’t always click with customers. I was as guilty of this as anyone. When I did anti-spyware I was guilty of calling my product a “data-driven Internet security solution” or “gateway threat prevention.” And while these terms do apply in a certain context of knowledge (say, a rival CEO’s), they are outside of the realm of a typical customer’s knowledge base. Now that I’m out of that market I can see it with fresh eyes, including the much simpler terms the common man describes it with.”

The solution to this problem is to discuss your products with people outside your company and outside your market. This is the only true way to learn the outsider’s perspective. Once you get an idea of what this is, you can apply it to the packaging and marketing of whatever product you have to offer.

2) Focus on benefits, not features.

This is one of the most oft-made mistakes in all of marketing. To an extent, this is understandable. When you have spent months or years toiling to create a new product, you are naturally excited about all the little things that make it tick and want to describe them to your customers. The problem, as with the last tip, is that the customers do not share this context of knowledge or enthusiasm. So what is the difference, precisely, between features and benefits?

A feature is what something IS. For example, a 50 number speed dial, or a 6 CD changer.

A benefit is why someone CARES. For example, fewer keystrokes and less hassle changing CDs.

Sadly, Entrepreneur.com notes that “not one in ten companies understands the difference” between features and benefits when it comes to preparing marketing campaigns or materials. For this reason, many well-intentioned marketers stress features over benefits and the bottom line suffers as a result. If you want put your marketing efforts into hyper drive, go over everything you put out with a fine-toothed comb and make sure benefits are top, front, and center. You will be amazed at how much of a difference this makes.

3) Write at a fifth-grade level. Really.

This might sound like we are demeaning your customers, but rest assured that this is not the case. It is simply a fact that most buyers respond better to simple language than complex language. In his book “Meaningful Marketing”, Eureka! Ranch founder Doug Hall notes a study proving this to be so. “Whether it’s the lack of reading done by most adults after high school, the immense information overload people experience, or a little of both, consumers simply shut down when confronted with lengthy tomes. The solution? Read your marketing material to a child in late elementary or middle school. Do they understand your product? If not, what did you need to tell them before they did? Incorporate what you learn into your marketing and you will be astounded at the results.”

4) Know whether your customers are right-brained or left-brained

Most of us are familiar with the idea of diving people into categories of right-brained or left-brained. Right-brained people are supposedly more emotional and impulsive while left-brained people are apparently more logical and deliberate in their decisions. In most cases your customer base will be a mixture of both, but one group tends to outweigh the other. You should make it a point of determining whether most of your customers are right-brained or left, as this can significantly amplify your marketing efforts. For example, left-brained customers will expect fliers and copy with lots of facts, product comparisons, and a clear demonstration of value for the money spent. While this is important to right-brainers too, you are more likely to win their business with enthusiasm and energy.

Running a product marketing campaign with these items in mind will help increase conversion rates on most marketing.

Eric Corl is the Founder and CEO of IdeaBuyer.com, a marketplace for new technology and products that gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email him at EricCorl@IdeaBuyer.com. You can visit the site by clicking here > New Technology and Products, Patents for Sale.

Developing a product is when the rubber meets the road, when theory meets practice, when ideas become real. While it would be impossible for any one article to give a blow-by-blow list of specific steps for making every kind of product imaginable, there are some definite principles that can and should be followed. Doing so ensures that your product development efforts result in something far more likely to succeed on the open marketplace.

With that being said, let’s dive in!

Do not get overly attached to your original conception.

Some inventors make the mistake of worshiping their original idea for what the product will look like when it is done. Many do this because they are afraid of becoming like entrepreneurs on the other extreme of the product development spectrum: those who never make any progress because they keep junking the product and starting from scratch. In fact, both of these approaches are wrong. The key to successful product development is to hold true to your idea without being so rigid that you refuse to make rational changes.

For example, let us say you are developing a new kind of water filtration system that is going to put the existing models to shame with its never-before-seen, super-accurate and top-secret filtration technology. In conceiving this new filter, you have decided to make it as an add-on to the sink faucet. That is, it will attach to the faucet and automatically filter water when someone turns it on. But let’s say you come across a questionnaire or focus group. It says that faucet filter sales have been in decline for two years. However, it shows consumers are quire enthusiastic about pitchers that will filter the water they pour into it.

If you are a smart product developer, you will strongly consider adapting your incredible new technology to this method. Refusing to acknowledge this trend and make anything other than what you originally thought of is the kind of stubbornness that kills otherwise great products. Do not let that become your story!

Set realistic deadlines for yourself and adhere to them.

Without deadlines, product development can devolve into endless “do-overs” and “back to the drawing board” sessions that become little more than a sinkhole of wasted time. Of course, a certain amount of mistake and retries are to be expected when developing a product. Trying to eliminate all of them would be impossible. Instead, the goal is to set reasonable deadlines for yourself.

If you are vexed by a particular problem, give yourself a set amount of time to solve it before moving on to the next issue. If you cannot resolve the problem in that amount of time, make a judgment call. Will a few more days suffice? Or is this something you should put on the back burner while you satisfy other pressing demands of developing the product? Prioritizing is key, and learning to do so will be an incalculable benefit to you. It will give your progress a sense of physical reality and keep you anchored to a plan.

Of course, your ultimate deadline should be one for completion: when do you hope to have the product developed by? Impose a deadline on yourself even if there isn’t one. The sooner your product is developed, the faster you can get it to market and begin reaping the fruits of your labor.

Get feedback from those outside your family and friends.

As you develop the product, show it to people at various stages. Collect feedback from them on what they like, what they do not like, and what they would like to see instead. Many inventors forgo this valuable feedback loop because they fear that sense of rejection. No one likes to hear that what they have worked on for months might not be so great after all.

So rather than seek the cleansing of truth, many inventors simply hypothesize to themselves about what people would think about the product. This is completely insufficient. Instead, your goal should be exposing your product to as much critical scrutiny as possible. This means to look outside your family and friends. While they are often concerned first and foremost with not hurting your feelings, outsiders will often be quite blunt about what you should do differently. Far from being a bad thing, this is actually invaluable.

If you show your product at various stages to say 20 people, and 14 of them make the same suggestion that you never thought of, that is an enormous help. You can be reasonably sure that this suggestion is something the people in your market would want as well.

To develop a product, you need to walk the tightrope of maintaining your vision while also respecting reality. By keeping an active mind, you will only strengthen your product and increase its chances for success.

Eric Corl is the Founder and CEO of IdeaBuyer.com, a marketplace for new technology and products that gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email him at EricCorl@IdeaBuyer.com.

One big concern on inventors’ minds is the rampant spread of Chinese intellectual property developments. It seems that no matter where you turn, opportunistic Chinese companies are flat-out stealing intellectual property from American companies, be it in the form of designs, processes, algorithms, or even entire products! Clearly, the rising tide of violations from this part of the world is worthy of some further study.

One prime example of Chinese intellectual property theft is a device called the miniOne. To the naked eye, the miniOne looks identical to the popular new iPhone from Apple, right down to the smoothe buttonless interface. However, the miniOne offers some things the iPhone does not. It runs popular mobile software that the iPhone wont support, in addition to being compatible with every worldwide wireless provider and not just AT&T. As if that were not enough, the miniOne promises to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many customers.

Now, the troubling aspect of all this is not the additional capabilities this Chinese company is seeking to add. On the contrary, these are all welcome additions to the sphere of wireless technology. The problematic element is simply the wholesale theft of the iPhone’s design and aesthetic properties, the “grifting” of its style, and applying it to a separate product as though it were their own.

But the intellectual property violations do not stop at iPhone clones. Vehicles are another prime target for cloning and cheap resale by Chinese entrepreneurs. Take the Laibao, for example. It’s a small SUV that would pass to any casual observer for a Honda CR-V. Indeed, many in the automotive industry speculate that the engineers at Laibao simply copied the CR-V, virtually part for part, in creating their own car. Or take the Geely Meerie, a carbon copy of a Mercedes C-Class. All the style and sophistication of Mercedes for a fraction of the price: 120,000 yuan, or $15,000 US dollars to be exact.

However, the problem of cloned vehicles is made most clear by the “sweet spot” of the Chinese market; vehicles that sell for around $5,000, which is just a bit shy of the typical middle class Chinese family’s income. When it comes to this segment of the market, the Chery QQ is top, front, and center.

The QQ is a part-for-part clone of a car known either as the Daewoo Matiz or the Chevy Spark. (The actual car is a joint venture between General Motors and the Korean company Daewoo.) In fact, Sparks are sold worldwide. In the United States, an upgraded $10,500 version called the Aveo is cheaper than any other car available. This helps explain the astonishment of American officials when the rock-bottom priced $5,000 QQ first surfaced on the marketplace in 2003. The shock and awe of Congressman James Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin) after a 2004 jaunt to China sums it up:

“If you didn’t have name tags on the cars, you couldn’t tell them apart. It’s such a good knockoff that you can pull the door off the Spark and it fits on the QQ, so close that the doors match right up.”

Clearly, the complete and shameless cloning of other companies’ products for cheap resale is an alarming problem in the IP community. To understand all the developments that led up to the present state, it helps to analyze the history of IP theft in China. In fact, the problem evolved through several distinct stages on its path to today’s frightening condition.

Chinese industry did not become capable of piece-by-piece cloning overnight. Far from it. A report from consulting firm A.T. Kearney segments the growth of China’s clowning prowess into five separate periods. The first period was the 1980’s, marked by primitive, fragmented efforts to produce cheap textile knockoffs like t-shirts. Few were alarmed at this point because the violations in question were trivial. The second period ocured during the 1990’s. Clothing and accessories were the primary focus of this period as well, but with a twist: high-quality merchandise fakes from Reebok and Nike began to flood the market and gain acceptance by budget-minded westerners. By the mid-90’s, Chinese copycats had moved from simple trademark infringement to low-end tech wares: things like Duracell batteries and DVDs.

From this springboard, says the study, an era of “advanced technology piracy” was launched. Difficult-to-detect knockoffs of Callaway golf clubs, counterfeit auto safety class, and other products appeared beginning in 1998. And by the new millennium, Chinese piracy had become so adept at cloning that they successfully duplicated Intel computer chips, Viagra sex tablets and Bosch power tools.

One practical way that Chinese cloners go about their actions is using “ghost shifts.” That is, a factory contracted out to make authentic goods moves to a 24 hour operation, during which it pumps out copies. Some may be made with inferior materials, others are made properly, but all are destined for sale on the black market: from midnight until morning. The only problem with ghost shifts was that they could not run full time. To solve this problem, developers began in the mid 90’s to build shadow factories – entire plants identical in composition and function to the original, often created from the very same blueprints that actual manufacturers used to launch. Using these and other tactics, the Chinese are literally siphoning American brainpower and innovation into their own pockets by way of making cheap knockoffs.

Clearly, this is a serious problem that anyone involved in intellectual property would do well to be mindful of. Chinese IP violations could create a whole host of adverse incentives for inventors if the problem is not addressed.

Luckily, there are still reliable Chinese Manufacturer representatives out there that can help inventors and companies take advantage of the pricing benefits that Chinese manufacturing can offer. However, be sure to conduct due dilligence to protect yourself from predatory manufacturers. Request references from their current clients and ensure that all of your proper documentation is in place. Ideally, try to find an American manufacturing representative (US Citizenship) that is on site in China. This typically reduces much of the friction in doing business overseas.

Eric Corl is the Founder and CEO of IdeaBuyer.com, a marketplace for new technology and products that gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email him at EricCorl@IdeaBuyer.com. You can visit the site by clicking here > Patents for Sale.

Selling Your Patent

Selling your patent outright is a quick and easy way to exit with cash in hand. It is a “take the money and run” strategy, something one would do in recognition of the fact that thousands of patents produce no wealth and it is prudent to take the early payoff if one can get it. This reality cannot be stated enough. Most patents produce nothing; in fact, some inventors toil for so long trying to find a market for their idea that the patent expires! By selling a patent outright, you avoid this outcome and ensure that you gain at least some reward for your efforts.

Selling a patent is also an attractive option for serial inventors; that is, those who intend on developing many more ideas to patent and pursue. Anyone who does this knows that it is an expensive business. Supplies, living expenses, legal costs, and other items make the creative process a rewarding but costly endeavor. By selling a patent, you can generate some quick capital to pay these expenses and/or fund the development of other ideas. This way, your operations become more self-supporting as you rely less and less on savings or income from your day job.

That said, there are some potential drawbacks to selling. After all, if your patent protects a new or unproven idea, the patent buyer probably wont want to spend a ton of money for it. It would simply be too big a gamble. Then again, what if it becomes a huge hit? More concretely, what if you sell your patent for $10,000 and it generates $10,000,000 in profits for the new owner? This is a very real possibility that you must reckon with before selling. For many people, this possibility is enough to scare them (irrationally) into rejecting perfectly good offers and holding onto their patent indefinitely.

However, you can and should make this decision intelligently. Think long and hard about your idea. Is it so innovative, so groundbreaking, so over-the-top revolutionary that it is going to redefine an industry? Or are there similar products out there for sale already? In the former case, you might want to hold on to your idea or hold out for a higher sum. In the latter case, however, you should reason that you might make money or you might not. You should take the sure thing: ie, sell the patent if someone makes an offer.

(It is worth noting a potentially lucrative alternative to selling: licensing. Licensing your patent grants exploitation rights to a licensee in exchange for royalties and performance options to ensure the licensee acts to make the patent a success for you. For a more in-depth explanation of patent licensing, see our article on the subject.)

How do you actually go about selling your patent? Several options exist, and you should choose the one that best matches your strengths and resources.

One way to sell your patent is through direct contact. Very simply, you would make a list of manufacturers and potential users of your product. A good place to start is the Thomas Register, which is available in most public libraries and on the Internet. It has contact information for thousands of companies across hundreds of sectors. The Yellow Pages are another solid resources in this regard.

When you do make contact with a firm, you want to present yourself as a Product Developer, not a mere inventor. This exudes an air of professionalism that established companies prefer. Then, request a face-to-face meeting with a Sales Manager or Product Manager within the company. Now, a word of caution is in order. You only want to schedule such a meeting if and when you have secured a patent for your idea. Otherwise, you have to ask the company to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements which they are unlikely to sign for standard business reasons. Therefore, a patent is your best (and often, only) means of selling your patent through direct contact methods.

Another option is to attend trade or invention shows. Here, you will encounter companies or people interested in your product and potentially buying it. Generally, it helps to have secured a patent here as well, if only because it would be easy for an interested party to run with your idea him/herself.

If neither of these options suit you, you can also advertise in trade journals or inventors’ magazines to scout out potential buyers for your patent.

In closing, selling your patent is a potentially lucrative way of capitalizing from your invention. If you have secured the patent already, you are in prime position to market it to interested parties and evaluate potential buyers in your quest to profit from your labor.

Eric Corl is the Founder and CEO of IdeaBuyer.com, a marketplace for new technology and products that gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email him at EricCorl@IdeaBuyer.com. You can visit the site by clicking here > Patents for Sale.

The year 2007 saw a number of groundbreaking inventions from many sectors. Medical technology, personal communication, sports safety, energy saving breakthroughs, and other gadgetry saw huge advances throughout the year. However, some inventions simply outshine the rest of the pack and deserve higher mention. In this article, we will examine the top 10 inventions of 2007 and what makes them a cut above the rest!

1) Air conditioner that controls “superbugs”

The Kunne air conditioning system is a tremendous breakthrough in climate control: the first ever AC that controls both heat and humidity! By controlling both of these elements, buildings such as hospitals can regulate the flow of viruses, mold, and germs in the air. This will, in theory, help prevent such buildings from becoming “sick buildings” where people get sick simply by working there or visiting. If the Kunne system becomes widespread, the days of catching “that bug that’s been going around” might become a thing if the past!

2) Electro Needle Biomedical Sensor Array

Tired of sticking needles into your flesh just to run a blood test? With the electro needle biomedical sensor array, this painstaking task might not be necessary for much longer. It is a small patch of a device that contains electro-chemically treated probes. When it gets applied to a patient’s skin, the probes perform an astonishingly accurate determination of chemical readings in the patent’s bloodstream without having to withdraw any actual blood. In this way, a patient’s electrolytes, toxins, carbohydrates, proteins, bacteria, and even viruses can be spotted without a single needle, all through this one patch. This patch could spell a whole new era in disease prevention, as those who refuse to get needle tests out of fear no longer have an excuse to avoid those annual checkups!

3) Diesel Exhaust Purification System

In these environmentally conscious times, it seems that everyone is looking for ways to protect the environment and lower pollution. This is exactly what Raymond Covit, a Los Angeles mechanic, did with his diesel exhaust purification system. This incredible invention forces diesel engines to re-breathe their own exhaust fumes, a drastic change from the engines of today which simply spew their fumes into the air we breathe. If Covit’s system catches on, we can expect a significant reduction in vehicle-based air pollution, not to mention those hideous black clouds we see pumping into the air during our morning commute. That’s something we can all be happy about!

4) Sports safety clothing that hardens on impact

The Dow Corning Active Protection System (named after its creator) is a new type of clothing material for athletes and bikers. The clothing is soft and flexible in the normal course of events, but contains a never-before-seen security feature: the clothes harden and become rigid upon any type of hard impact! This protects the wearer in the event of nasty falls and collisions, during which their clothes will protect any skin that is covered by them. Best of all, the material bounces back to its regular, flexible consistency after you are out of harm’s way and is completely washing machine safe. Anyone involved in extreme sports like skateboarding, BMX bikes, rock crawling, or rugby may soon find that these clothes are the standard apparel!

5) Organic light-emitting diode

Organic light-emitting diodes (or OLEDs) are said to have the potential to change the way we light our homes and design clothing. OLEDs are simply thin strips of plastic with the ability to conduct electricity and harness solar power for later use. The applications of this technology are virtually limitless, such as changing the color of clothing. Another novel use (no doubt suggested by the owner of a sports bar) is OLED strips on beer cans that display up-to-the-minute sports scores. The best part is that OLEDs are significantly more energy efficient than today’s light bulbs, paving the way for guilt-free innovation and lighting possibilities!

6) Steam-O-Lene Engine

Enraged over high gas prices and wasteful engines, Bruce Crower decided that it would be more productive to do something about it than complain about it. The result? The fascinating Steam-O-Lene engine that makes more efficient use of steam to squeeze more life out of every gas tank. While the typical engine wastes ¾ of its energy in the form of heart, Crower’s engine (a single-cylinder diesel with 8HP) uses that heat to create steam, thus recapturing some of that precious lost energy. It runs much the same way that conventional four-stroke combustion engines do, but just as the Steam-O-Lene finishes the fourth stroke, water is squirted into the 1,500 degree cylinder. This intense heat and the ensuing reaction of the water creates steam, which generates a 1,600-fold expansion in volume and drives a piston down to create some more power.

The end result is more of that lost heat being converted to power strokes that actually move the car forward instead of evaporating into nothingness.

7) The Green Brick

While clay bricks have become a fixture in American construction, inventor Henry Liu has a new vision: a green brick. His brick is made entirely of fly ash, which is a major waste product of coal power plants that simply sits in a landfill after it is produced. And rather than solidifying under extreme heat like regular bricks do, the green brick forms under pressure. This saves a considerable amount of energy and costs some 20% less, which puts a smile on manufacturers’ faces. They are even desirable from a construction standpoint because the way they are molded leads to smoother, more uniform surfaces that slash precious time off of the bricklaying process.

8) StarChase Pursuit Management System

If you were planning on orchestrating a heart-pumping police chase anytime soon, this device might give you reason to reconsider. The StarChase Pursuit Management system uses a laser-guided “gun” that is mounted on the front grill of squad cars. The beam can tag fleeing vehicles at almost any speed with a GPS tracker that will retain the data and forward it in real-time back to police headquarters for further analysis and use in assisting backup patrols. Bad news for thieves and drug dealers, but great news for the crime fighters.

9) Blood type conversion

It used to be that if you needed type-O blood, nothing but that would suffice. This has long been a vexing problem for blood banks, as type-O negative is by far the most valuable blood commodity there Is. However, testing is underway for “Blood Simple”, a device that Danish researchers created to convert other blood types to O with the aid of bacteria. The crux of the discovery? Two isolated enzymes made by bacteria that can erode the sugar molecules which demarcate types A, B, and AB-negative blood from one another. This would more or less convert them to type O, greatly increasing the potential supply of this highly sought-after blood type. With technology like this on the horizon, blood transfusion shortages may not plague us for very much longer!

10) Apple iPhone

Named Time Magazine’s 2007 Invention of the Year, the iPhone has delighted critics since Steve Jobs dramatically unveiled it at the MacWorld convention earlier this year. In one device, the iPhone consolidates a wireless phone, an iPod, a web browser, a camera, and an e-mail communicator. The Internet is rendered much as it looks on normal computers and easily navigated with a super-intuitive touch screen. The iPhone also boasts a massive 8GB of storage for your music, movies, pictures, or documents. And gone are the days of cheap, fast-dying cell phone batteries: the iPhone offers 24 hours of life for continuous music playback, and as long as 12 hours for continuous video. With so much power and capability packed into one gadget, it is no wonder the iPhone took home Time’s top invention honors!