As an inventor, you will face a lot of obstacles while building a prototype of your great idea. A prototype is a good first step. But if you are unable to sell your idea/invention, it will count for nothing. If you do not sell or license the invention, you will end up with a useless patent in your hand, and thousands of dollars spent for nothing.
Inventors, by their very nature, are great thinkers. Some of them, are great doers also. They create a prototype and file for a patent. But, even the doers are very bad negotiators, most of the time. What is the reason for this? Every inventor has a very distorted picture about ownership and profit sharing. Their thought process is, “I created this after so much of thinking and effort, so I deserve the lion’s share of profits”.
Unfortunately, it does not work that way. Think about the manufacturer – he is the one who is taking all the risk with your idea. Even if your idea is great, the final product could fail for a number of reasons, including the economy, market conditions, better product from competitor entering the market, etc. There is a lot of risk in deciding to manufacture a product that has not proven itself in the market.
If the profit margins are big enough, most of the manufacturers will be happy to pay you a reasonable amount of royalty. But if you ask for too much, there may not be enough margins left for the manufacturer to make a profit. The risk to reward ratio will be too high, from their perspective. So, they will just walk out. And you will be left with a great idea, and no product – in other words, 100% of nothing!
So, never be greedy while negotiating with manufacturers – especially if you are a first time inventor.
“Thanks to Lilienthal’s efforts and the write-ups about them in the press, the sceintific community and the general public started to realize that flying machines were possible.”I’m sorry? What!George Cayley was considered by many, including the Wright brothers, to be the father of aviation. His first successful full sized manned flight (manned by his coachman) was made when Lilienthal was only five years old. His first flight with a smaller glider crewed by a 10 year old boy was made when Lilienthal was still and infant. Cayley’s work was widely documented long before Lilienthal began his flights. His experiments with paper gliders are claimed to have begun as early as 1792.Cayley was almost certainly an influence upon Lilienthal. At the very least Lilienthal must have been aware of Cayley’s work. He certainly did not make the sceintific community “start to realize that flying machines were possible”. Cayley had done that years earlier.