Our conversation this week takes us into the world of product licensing, specifically the licensing of consumer products. And what we discuss will no doubt come as a bit of a shock to many patent practitioners and innovators in the high-tech and life sciences industries.
In this episode, I speak with Stephen Key, who is an inventor, entrepreneur, author and the founder of InventRight, which is a coaching company that helps independent inventors and startups learn how to license their inventions and ideas to industry. Unlike many who operate in the invention space and cater to independent inventors, Stephen has been and continues to be a successful inventor in his own right, having licensed many of his own inventions, and even having been forced to chase an infringer into a patent litigation case once upon a time.
I’ve known Stephen for many years. I don’t know how he does it, but I’ve never seen a single complaint against him or his company. The inventors he works with love him—literally—and many of them make very good money, which we discuss during our conversation.
I always enjoy talking with Stephen because for so much of the generation the patent and innovation industry has fallen apart thanks bad policy decisions and increasingly bad decisions from the Supreme Court and Federal Circuit. But as Stephen will tell us, there is a part of the industry that continues to work very well, and precisely as designed.
If you are an inventor of a consumer product there are reputable companies looking for inventions and ideas to bring to market, and their business model is built on taking products to market over and over again, and they are in constant need of new products and improvements. They also realize litigation is wasteful when you are dealing with products that often have a 1-, 2- or 3-year shelf life, so they are willing to do deals that allow them to quickly get products onto shelves and into the stream of commerce, and inventors get paid.
Indeed, it is truly ironic that if you have invented something that is good, solid and likely to make you tens of thousands of dollars, even several hundred thousand dollars, there is a licensing deal for you to find. But if you are an inventor who has invented something so valuable it is worth hundreds of millions of dollars because it is being infringed by one of the tech giants they will fight you forever and likely pay you nothing.
So, there are definitely at least two sides to the patent, innovation, and commercialization market. And today we will focus on those inventors who make money producing base-hit after base-hit.
Of course, this all starts with the patent process, or more accurately with at least a well drafted provisional patent application. A well drafted provisional patent application has always been the foundational basis of what Stephen does, how he gets his own deals, and what he teaches his inventor students to do as well.
To hear this entire conversation, listen wherever you get your podcasts (links here). Or visit IPWatchdog Unleashed on Buzzsprout.
