Licensing Intellectual Property
Most common way of monetizing your intellectual property (IP) is licensing. The main advantage when comparing to IP sale is that you remain the owner or author of your IP. By licensing you assign your rights to your IP such as trademark, patent, design or copyright to another person in exchange for royaltees. The royalties can be paid in full upfront or you can setup monthly or yearly payments.
You can license your IP to more licensees at once if you decide and can do so. This is called non-exlusive licensing. This way you can multiply your earnings in the same time. If you want to grant exclusive license to someone that means you can not grant it to the third party anymore.
Also bear in mind that you can limit your license to the certain territory only. For instance if you are a book writer you can grant territorialy exclusive license to one publisher in one country and another license to different publisher in another country. Both licenses can have different terms and conditions.
But where do you find licensee for your IP? Most people find the licensee easily because usualy when you work in certain segment for years, you probably have some contacts and if your IP is useful and „saleable“ then you will have your prospective licensee very soon just by asking around. Other situation comes up if its not the case and you would like to search on your own.
In that case we recommend looking online for IP marketplaces. It can be difficult to find the suitable option for you at the start, but you can always find a professional counsel if you are not sure if you are going the right way. You can find the list of some online IP marketplaces here.
