Monday, November 26, 2012

Licensing Contracts Boot Camp, Chapter 2: Are You Ready to License Something As a Licensor?


You may be thinking: this licensing stuff sounds complicated, so it's not for me. Or that you really don't have any anything to license. Or that licensing something from someone else is not for you.

I am sorry to break it to you, but you're wrong (with all due respect as my fellow attorneys say). I believe that everyone, whether they have an education or not, is able to license something, as the licensor or licensee. Everyone possesses special knowledge of one sort or another than another person could want or use. Or anyone with good business instincts can build a business around someone else's good ideas. Let's look at some examples.

1. You are a backyard part-time automobile mechanic. You do it as a hobby. Through years of working at it, you have found a technique which makes oil changes a lot easier. It could be a special wrench that you designed, or a special pan, or a method of disposing of the oil or cleaning the driveway after the oil change. Do you not think you could interest someone in your know-how? It could a manufacturer interested in turning your know-how into a mass-market product. Or a distributor? Or a retailer carrying oil cleaning products?. Or a nation-wide oil change company? You may be on to something and you do not even know it. A patent application could also be possible.

2. You are a stay-at-home mother and an expert cook. You have crafted a series of healthy recipes that make your children eat vegetables. Your plan is similar to the authors who are marketing books on hiding vegetables in food but your approach is different. It even makes the food tastier. So you could write a manuscript and license it out to a publishing house so that they make a book out of it. If you are not a writer, no problem. You could work with a "ghost-writer" or co-write the book with someone who can write and treat it as a joint licensing project.

3. You are a science student. In the course of your lab studies you encountered a potential new application to reduce greenhouse emitting gases. Once again, this is something that could be licensed, presumably in this case after having filed a patent application.

The moral of this story is that things you do in everyday life could be the subject of licensing possibilities. Just be aware of this, and think about it as you conduct your daily life. These could open up your life to new possibilities if you understood the basics of how licensing works.

People do not move forward with their ideas because they get overwhelmed,get scared or fear the money costs including legal fees. The first step of going forward is losing the fear with know-how.

In the next chapter, I will show you how you can license something from someone else.

Basics of Trademarks for Small Business   Managing the Unmanageable for Law Office/Firms Management   Intellectual Property Monetization Is More of a Moral Issue   



0 comments:

Post a Comment


Twitter Facebook Flickr RSS



Français Deutsch Italiano Português
Español 日本語 한국의 中国简体。