Patent Attorney and Founder
Hi everyone I’m JD Houvener your host of the Bowl today’s show we’re huge inventor and entrepreneur business owner get your daily dose of inspiration to make the world a better place we’re here talking about money week and I want to remind you real briefly for those that you might have missed it yesterday we talked about patent enforceability when you’re building a business and you want to protect your invention the number one way to make money is to make sure no one else gets in your industry and that’s through enforcement what I forgot to mention was that there are lots of different venues where you can bring your lawsuit you can take it to federal court take it to the patent trial and appeal board or you can take it to the international trade commission ITC those are all different venues that can help you enforce your patent rights and get you different results so today we’re talking about different ways to bring in money if you’re the inventor or even a business and you want to think about well let’s not grow I’ll grow a business out of this we want to build a license our rights to get a royalty so making money through royalties how does it happen well the number one way is by contracting with at least one other party and giving up part of what you own don’t forget as a patent holder you have four distinguished rights you have the right to prevent anyone else in your jurisdiction let’s just say the United States for making using selling or importing into the US as you can license any one of those rights and in an exclusive or a non-exclusive manner it’s important to work with an attorney and a patent license attorney in order to make sure you structure the deal very favorably to you you wanna make sure you you negotiate important terms such as the term right how long is a license good for a grant what is it one of those four rights are you giving up and in what manner as I said whether they’re the exclusive whether they’re the only manufacturer that can make it or if they’re one of a hundred that can make the same product of course the grant clause which is your ability to give it up give up those rights and what royalty you receive from that really in keep key terms to think about in contract there’s a lot more to think about when it comes to licensing law and that is especially regarding the performance clause under the exclusive contracts under license agreements there’s a lot of cases that come up where there’s problems that happen right you find a manufacturer or a salesperson you want to license the ability to sell your product well if they’re the only company out there able to sell your product and they fall short they’ve said you know what we don’t want to sell the product anymore they move on to the next one you want to make sure that contract has teeth that guarantees that if they let it go you’ve got the ability to pull the license from them that’s called a performance clause so it’s another aspect of these license deals that are kind of twisted you got to build forward thinking but how they’re gonna function another interesting aspect about patent law in terms of Licensing is patent exhaustion when you’re selling things like a little software that aren’t quiet is tangible right when it comes into a software licensing you’ve got to consider the fact that someone might use your product without your permission after a sale so patent exhaustion means that you no longer have rights once it’s been licensed and purchased if the if the person that bought the software can prove that without a doubt there was no conditions on that sale they can do with that software what they will so more to come on patent exhaustion later this week lots to learn about licenses but that’s it’s a number two way to make money in patents I’m your host JD Houvener of the bowl today’s show thanks for tuning in go big go bowl
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