They got their licenses- but not the kind inventors want!
As a product developer or inventor, there are two ways to get your product to market: licensing or manufacture and sell it yourself. Manufacturing and selling it yourself is pretty self explanatory, but licensing has multiple meanings and often confuses people.
What is licensing?
By definition, the verb license means to grant permission.
What does licensing have to do with inventors?
An inventor can license out their patent and give another company permission to manufacture and sell it. Licensing can either be used in conjunction with manufacturing and selling your product yourself, or as an alternative for inventors that don’t want to manufacture their own product.
Another way that licensing is sometimes applicable for inventors and product developers, is licensing trademarked logos and names. For example, let’s say you have a product that baseball fans love and you want to put the New York Yankees logo on it, you would have to license the logo from the Yankees.
As you can see, licensing intellectual property is nothing like getting a driver’s license or marriage license that involves a government application and fee. Anyone with intellectual property rights can license it out to any other party that is willing.
How do inventors get licensing deals?
Enhance Product Development can assist inventors and product developers with finding potential companies to license their product and negotiate all the details of the licensing deal. Contact us today to discuss your idea and how we can help.
As for putting the Yankees logo on your product, you would have to contact the Yankees to discuss a licensing deal with them. Same with any copyrighted or trademarked logo, name, etc that you want to use, the best thing is to just call the company that owns the intellectual property rights and start the conversation about licensing.