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Patents have the attributes of personal property. This unique attribute presents to the patentee a wide spectrum of useful choices, especially in financial transactions. Patents are considered intangible assets that could be licensed, assigned, transferred, sold, mortgaged, etc. They could be leveraged in acquiring useful technology from another patent owner by making them the subject of a cross-licensing agreement. This is a common practice in a fast-track technology sector, such as e-commerce, telecommunications and computer industry.
It is worth noting that while unauthorized exploitation of a patent by someone other than the patent owner is prohibited, it is not necessary that the patent owner exploit the invention to collect royalty. Stated another way, the patent owner need not manufacture the patented item in order to collect damages from an unauthorized user. Prolific U.S. inventor, Jerome H. Lemelson, is reported to have collected more than $500 million in royalties from several big Japanese and European companies, without ever making a single item under his many patents. Qualcomm, a holder of 327 patents on its code division multiple access (CDMA) digital wireless technology for phones, is reported to have collected $177 billion in royalties in the 4th quarter of 1999 alone. According to a Wall Street analyst, Qualcomm will collect $20 billion in royalties on its patents in the year 2010.
How do you go about marketing your patent?
Traditionally, patentees researched the companies that marketed products similar to their innovation and initiated correspondence with them. This is no longer a favorite method as it frequently resulted in "no" or "not-interested" response, and was found to be inefficient as it took a very long time.
The recent explosion of the Internet has made the arduous process of marketing an invention significantly easier. There are several websites that allow free-listing of new technology and collect a percentage of the value of the deal made with a licensee or buyer. One such site is eIPstreet.comSM.
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