The B2B Podcast Index
Pitch to Product

Patent Before You Launch? How to Protect & Sell Your Product Idea

Pitch to Product · 2026-06-10 · 41 min

Substance score

42 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density9 / 20
Originality7 / 20
Guest Caliber9 / 20
Specificity & Evidence10 / 20
Conversational Craft7 / 20

Wayne Carroll, a patent attorney at Inspired Idea Solutions, discusses the critical steps inventors and entrepreneurs should take before filing a patent, including conducting thorough prior art searches, developing a business plan, and understanding market timing. The conversation covers the patent filing process timeline (3 months to prepare and file), office actions, prior art vs. published information, and the importance of balancing patent protection with speed-to-market strategy.

Key takeaways

  • Inventors must validate that their idea solves a real market problem that people will pay to solve before investing in patents, not assume the patent alone will generate sales.
  • A comprehensive prior art search requires professional expertise using classification systems and commercial databases beyond simple keyword searching, as inventors can unknowingly infringe on prior art found in patents, journals, social media, or old product catalogs.
  • Filing a patent takes a minimum of 3 months (4-6 weeks for search, 4-8 weeks for preparation), with U.S. Patent Office examination taking 22 months average, though paying $2,000 can reduce this to 5 months via expedited examination.
  • Inventors should have a basic business plan (one page covering who they'll sell to, pricing, customer acquisition, and manufacturing/delivery) and ideally a small team with roles for financial decisions, invention/engineering, and business judgment before consulting an IP attorney.
  • Once a patent is filed with a priority date, entrepreneurs can immediately begin marketing and production without waiting for approval, but cannot sue for infringement until the patent is actually issued.

Topics in this episode

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

9 / 20

There are a handful of genuinely useful tactical points - patent claims require every listed element for infringement, classification-based prior art searching vs. keyword searching, the $2,000 expedite fee mechanics - but the majority of the episode is introductory-level material and promotional filler with little non-obvious density.

for someone to infringe your patent once it's allowed, they have to do everything that's in that claim. So if you have a claim that has 30 elements and somebody is doing 29 of those, they're not an infringer
an extra about $2,000 will get your examination started in about five months versus 22 months

Originality

7 / 20

The single most contrarian and useful point - that companies prefer buying businesses over licensing bare ideas, so inventors need proven revenue before approaching licensors - is a genuinely fresh reframe. Everything else, including the E-Myth plug and the 'inventors vs. entrepreneurs' distinction, is recycled conventional wisdom.

companies don't, they more often buy your business then buy, then license your product
the risks of an invention is they might set up a factory and nobody buys it. So how do you reduce that risk? You set up a factory and you sell it to people and you show them people are buying this

Guest Caliber

9 / 20

Wayne Carroll is a practicing specialized business and IP attorney - directly relevant to the topic - but the content he delivers is introductory and no high-profile cases, scale indicators, or notable client outcomes are mentioned, limiting how much his practitioner depth actually shows.

I'm a business attorney, specialized business attorney, and so I help businesses
we use commercial databases that, and we are looking at patents around the world

Specificity & Evidence

10 / 20

A handful of concrete numbers (22 months vs. 5 months examination, $2,000 expedite fee, 4 - 6 weeks for search, 20-year patent term, 3-month minimum prep) give the episode some grounding, but there are zero named client examples, case studies, or market data points to support broader strategic claims.

an extra about $2,000 will get your examination started in about five months versus 22 months
it's a 20-year write from when you file the application

Conversational Craft

7 / 20

Jack Dalton asks a few legitimate and sequenced follow-ups (priority date timing, office action mechanics, what to do during the waiting period) but there is no pushback on any claim, the episode is bookended by mutual business promotion, and the host frequently responds with empty affirmations rather than probing questions.

Yeah, that is that's a great test. That's a great test.
Wow. Wow, that is a major difference. I didn't realize it was that that you could shave that much time off the process.

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the verbal tics along the way.

Filler words

so75you know31right20like16actually13kind of7basically7sort of4obviously2

Episode notes

Have a brilliant product idea, but don't know what to do next? In this episode of the Pitch to Product podcast, host Jack Dalton (Business Development Manager at 52 Launch) sits down with intellectual property expert and patent attorney Wayne Carroll of Inspired Idea Solutions. Together, they break down the exact roadmap for taking an invention from a mere concept to a profitable reality. You'll learn how to approach your initial IP consultation, the hidden truths behind prior art searches, how to fast-track the USPTO timeline, and why the "Shark Tank" model of licensing a raw idea might be holding you back. Whether you're an inventor wishing a product existed or an entrepreneur looking to scale a brand, this episode gives you the practical business strategies you need to succeed. Work with 52 Launch to build your product business: Fill out our confidential form at (Built-in NDA included!). Schedule a consultation with Wayne Carroll: Protect your IP at . Don't forget to LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE for more product development and IP strategies! Chapters 00:00 - Introduction: Pitch to Product 02:26 - When is it time to move forward with your idea?

Full transcript

41 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Jack & Wayne: Welcome back to the Pitch to Product podcast. I'm your host today, Jack Dalton, a business development manager at 52 Launch. Today we're going to be talking about how inventors and entrepreneurs can set themselves up for success in bringing a product to market ⁓ and to have conversations with 52 Launch with our IP expert here today, Wayne Carroll of Inspired Idea Solutions. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Thank you. Jack & Wayne: yeah, great to have you here, Wayne. We appreciate the time. Jack Dalton: as an inventor or an entrepreneur, how do you know it's time to move forward with your idea? And then once you've decided it is time to move forward, what are the first steps you can take? Obviously, that might look like having a conversation with the experts at 52 launch. Or with the IP team over at Inspired Idea Solutions. But a lot of people walk into those conversations a little bit unprepared to actually be moving forward when they set up those calls. And so it'd be great to hear your thoughts on what makes a successful consultation with you. What do people have ready? What have they, what research have they done, what materials have they put together? How do they come to the call compared to somebody who Maybe you have to tell come back in a week after you do these things. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Okay, yeah, timing is very critical and there's a lot of elements to it when we talk about, and we're not just talking about patent law, but how do you succeed in this endeavor? ⁓ Under patent law, timing is critical. Your priority date is the date you file a patent. So the sooner you can file a patent, the better. But at the same time, ⁓ there's costs too. preparing and filing a patent and you want to ensure that your invention is complete enough when you file a patent that you aren't completely redesigning it after you file. If you do that, you've got to file a new patent to cover the redesign. And so it is this balance of how soon do you get the patent going and get to the patent office to get that priority date. And the other big issue is having confidence that this idea is a winner. There are a lot of great ideas that don't match the market at the time. Maybe it matched five years ago, maybe it'll match at five years in the future. But if it doesn't match today's market, then it's not a good investment. ⁓ I'm a business attorney, specialized business attorney, and so I help businesses. And if somebody comes to me as an individual, I'm there to help them, but really with a business purpose. If they don't know what their business purpose is, I can't help them nearly as effectively. So one of the critical things is what is your business purpose? Even if you haven't form to business. That's not important. It's what are you going to do to succeed? ⁓ Business plans sometimes are, you know, people think, ⁓ this like 50 page thing you give to a banker to try to get money. Don't think of that. Think of a one page. Who are you going to sell it to? What are you going to sell it for? How are you going to find those people? And how are you going to make it and deliver like five questions, know, in one or two sentences for each. That's a business plan and that's the plan you look at every day and say, how am I doing on these? So if you don't have a business plan and there are a lot of inventors who think, well, this idea is so great, as soon as I get a patent, people are going to start calling me and offering me money. That would be great, but it haven't heard of it happening. ⁓ Jack Dalton: Us neither. Yeah, there's a there's a difference between inventors and entrepreneurs. And it's you know kind of a challenge that we tackle at fifty two launch every day is we get a lot of inventors in the front door who've come up with an idea that fills a need in the market, solves a problem that doesn't have an existing elegant solution. And basically they're making the product because they wish it existed, which is awesome. And that's how a lot of great products start. However, you got to get to the point where you understand the goal of bringing a product to market is to make money. And you need a strategy for that. You need marketing, you need a good brand. You need distribution and manufacturing are two of the hardest ones. But you also need protection. So Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Right. One there, there is more than one form of protection. So sometimes there are the business plan. makes more sense to focus on quickly getting to market, really hitting the mass market and building a brand. Jack Dalton: ⁓ yeah, absolutely. That's a Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: ⁓ Now you can do that whether or not you get a patent. But sometimes when, and we always recommend starting with research to determine what has been done before, what has been published before. Actually that's different than what has been done before. There are many things that ⁓ people have come up with the ideas. They've either filed a patent, they've put it online, they've published it in a journal. Those all make those ideas unpatentable. Even if they are not on the market and haven't been on the market for 50 years, they're not patentable. But that doesn't mean maybe it was a great idea. And now with today's technology, it's a perfect idea. And it wasn't back then. Doesn't mean you can't bring it to market. You just need to know that ⁓ what you are going to build, especially in that kind of case, is your brand. So that people... associate, you know, get to know your brand, get to know this is where I go for that solution. And then you can continue to serve those people with, that are looking for that solution. Jack Dalton: Absolutely. And to go back just a sec, ⁓ all of that published information that you're talking about, that's considered prior art, correct? Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah, and art, that can be really confusing. So the Constitution ⁓ refers to the arts, meaning the sciences. And I like to tell people we do use that a little bit. We say state of the art, and we're talking about technology. That's the same context. So state of the art is state of the technology. Prior art is anything that's published about technology. And that's not just patents. It's... Jack Dalton: Mm-hmm. Right. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: The internet, know, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, all of those are publications. Jack Dalton: Product catalogs from 30 years ago, trade shows. Yeah, that's a that's a question we get a lot here at 52 launch ⁓ when we're starting to talk about whether a client should pursue a patent or should pursue trademarks. Is you know, I see these attorneys are charging additional for a a prior art search or a trademark search. What am I actually getting for that? What is the attorney doing that I couldn't just look up myself? So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about a Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah. Jack Dalton: what goes into a prior art search and why it's maybe something that the average person couldn't do themselves. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: And the average person can do a lot. ⁓ some businesses are going fast and they want us to just do the whole thing. They're not going to spend time digging into it themselves. ⁓ Others, especially those who this is their first venture, they can go and they can do some research. Of course, everybody looks on Amazon and the other e-commerce websites to see, is anyone selling this? ⁓ But there are the patent office. Their first place to look is published patent applications and patent ⁓ issued patents. You can go to ⁓ Google patents. You can look up Google patents and they have and there ⁓ there may be a month or so behind the commercial databases. of what's been published. So it's not bad. so you can get a lot of information searching there. ⁓ so it is helpful when someone comes to me and says, I've done this much searching. This is what I found. ⁓ And so then, well, what do I do? So we use commercial databases that, and we are looking at patents around the world. Jack Dalton: Not bad. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: in any publications. We're looking at trade journals. ⁓ We're looking at some other publications that you do need a subscription to search into. And those are some of the same places that the patent office can search. ⁓ As well as the type of search we do is different because we're not just keyword searching. There is a huge ⁓ classification system for all the elements of an idea. ⁓ determining where is this filed in that classification system. And so we have to determine where should we focus our search because of the elements and knowing, you know, is this a ⁓ bicycle handle? that rotates or that slides or, you know, and there's a different category for each of those. Those kind of details are in this system. And one of the reasons you really have to do that system is there's not a word that you're required to use when describing your invention. You can even make up words. So keyword searches could miss all of that. Jack Dalton: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So circling back to the the question that I started with, which is what should an inventor have or be thinking about when they schedule an initial consultation with you? Sounds like, no. A level of design that allows you to understand the product well enough to do a search, a comprehensive search in depth, and actually find anything that's you know potentially going to be infringed upon, some level of market research, and an understanding of what else is on the market already that's readily findable, so they know where the starting point is. So on our side at 52 launch. Certainly, we can work with people who just schedule a consultation and and have an idea. No prototype, no drawings, no AI generated images, ⁓ basically starting from scratch. We can do that. It's it's not a problem. But when people come to us with some fleshed out diagrams of the product, their intended users, what the initial market that they want to target is. Some you know, we love it when people come to us with IP already. because then we know, you know, not only are they serious, but we can go and design this thing without any fear that we're gonna be ⁓ infringing on somebody else's intellectual property. But yeah, those questions that you mentioned earlier, the the business-minded, how am I gonna sell this? What is it gonna cost to make? You know, those are the types of questions that we like to get in those initial conversations. ⁓ Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: And one of the things that, yeah, that you hear from someone who's not experienced, not very prepared is they'll say, there's nothing like this at all on the market. And you really need to be thinking about, what is the problem you're solving? And people are either living with the problem or they're solving it a different way. What are they doing? And if everybody's living with it, Jack Dalton: But yeah, it's it's certainly a range. Exactly. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: then they're living with it. Why do they need your solution? They're already living with it. If they're solving in a different way, what's the cost of that in terms of not just money, but time and other things? You need to really get clear of that people are willing to pay to solve this problem. And this, what they're paying right now fits in at least with what you want them to pay. for your solution. Jack Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. We get a lot of requests of people who are serious about their idea, who want to start taking their first steps. And they come to us and they ask ⁓ a lot often for market research and a prototype. And those are logical. It makes sense. You know, you want to prove the concept to yourself with a prototype, maybe shop it around a little bit, and to have some numbers that you can look at that tell a story that there is a market here. You're solving a legitimate problem that people recognize and are willing to pay to fix. That's all great. It's not as great as printing a thousand units off a production line and putting it in front of people and saying, you know, will you actually give me $49.99 for this? Because when it's a hypothetical, you're gonna get a lot of yeses. You're gonna get a lot of people that say, ⁓ I would totally buy that if it existed. When you have the product itself and you're able to offer it for sale, that's the real feedback. It's either they're gonna buy it or they're not. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah. Jack Dalton: And certainly our team are are have plenty of expertise on positioning products in in manners that people are able to find them, understand exactly what they do, ⁓ what the value proposition is. But yeah, it's the market research is it's great, it's helpful, but it only tells you so much compared to actually bringing a product to market, putting it in front of people and asking for some money. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah, yeah. And you can do ⁓ some level of that. And sometimes it makes sense to find people with the ⁓ problem you're solving. And before you've done a production run and clearly explained the solution, show it to them, video or AI version, and say, what would you pay for this? And then if they say they would pay for it, will you give me your email address and can I contact you? Because that's not necessarily a full sale, but they're giving up something for the hope that you would actually solve their problem. That tells you that, okay, they are serious. But if people are like, ⁓ no, I'll just look for your marketing. That means they're not, they don't actually want it. They don't care. Jack Dalton: Right. Yeah, that is that's a great test. That's a great test. And then you you know, you start building that email email marking list early on, which I think people might believe those are sort of becoming outdated. In our experience, that's not the case at all. They're the email marking lists are as strong as ever. It's a truly powerful way to sell products. yeah, absolutely. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, what do they need to have when they come to me? How do they be prepared? ⁓ So the best prepared ones, they have a team. They've got, they've often, they figured out that it is gonna cost some money and they have somebody on the team who can handle that money aspect. ⁓ Jack Dalton: So Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: They understand that this is a business decision and they have someone on the team who can make good business decisions. And they know for a patent, it needs to be new, innovative, something that hasn't been done before. So they have someone on the team who is their innovator, who is their engineer, inventor. They can all be the same person, but most of the time, You at least have two people with those roles. Between those roles. Yeah. Jack Dalton: Interesting. Right. Yeah, absolutely. That ⁓ That's a trend we've seen as well for for sure. Yeah, fantastic. So switching gears a little bit here. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: And yeah, go ahead. Jack Dalton: Yeah. Another question we get pretty frequently, especially on the on the topic of of patents, is how long does the patent application process typically take from start to finish? And then once you've filed the patent, how long are you generally waiting before approval and and full registration? Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Right. So in most cases, what we have people prepare for is the patent search taking ⁓ four to six weeks and then preparing and filing the patent for four to eight weeks. A lot of that is depending on our workload. We can rush things. Jack Dalton: Mm-hmm. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: One of the concerns about rushing things is we're trying to do things quickly. We have a process. We don't want to skip any steps. so, you know, it's having the time, having, you know, at least six weeks for doing the research, at least six weeks for preparing the application and drafts. So a good three month minimum time frame from when you start. getting it filed. And sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes we can go faster. But that's a general good. And I don't know what other firms do, but we've designed processes around that kind of time frame to have about three months to research and prepare the application. And of course, the Patent Office, they can take a long time. There is There are some ways to expedite an application. The main one is pay more money. an extra about $2,000 will get your examination started in about five months versus 22 months. Jack Dalton: Wow. Wow, that is a major difference. I didn't realize it was that that you could shave that much time off the process. So is that pretty typical with your clients to make that investment in order to get a patent more quickly? Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: A lot of them do, yeah, yeah. timing it with. Jack Dalton: Yeah, it's not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Right, yeah. And if you think about it, it's a 20-year write from when you file the application. So if you get an extra year because you paid $2,000, is that, is that, you know, it's like an extra 5 % of your patent. Jack Dalton: Mm-hmm. Right. If you're gonna make more than two grand selling your product that year, from a business standpoint, it makes sense. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Right. Well, and often actually the first years, and it depends on the industry, but the first few years are often more valuable than the end. Unless you're pharmaceuticals, because their regulation process and everything. Pharmaceuticals, last year, their last months of patent are so valuable to them, especially if they can get it over the counter before their patent runs out, that kind of thing. Jack Dalton: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. And so even you know, even if a client is willing to pay that two thousand to expedite the process, five month waiting period is still pretty significant where a lot of inventors might feel like they're basically sitting around. So what what progress can people make in that time period while they're waiting for the US BTO examiner to to take a look at their application? You know, can you Could you start working with fifty two launch in that window and refining the design for manufacturing, starting to get some branding materials together, moving towards production? Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah, that's a great question. I actually get that a lot. What can I start making it? And the things that are affected by the timing of the patent process is once you have filed, you've got a priority date. So that's the date they're looking at was, was this new as of that date? So putting it out there as soon as you filed is fine. I you can ⁓ coordinate and file, and then the next day, launch a website and start marketing and all this. ⁓ But the other issue is you can't sue anybody for patent infringement until you have an issued patent. So the research side helps not just us to know, it patentable? but also we give feedback on ⁓ what we'd likely expect going through the patent office. so basically, if you're willing to rely on the research and invest expecting you will get a patent, I recommend people not wait. That as soon as it's filed, go for it. Get product to market, get sales, get money in the door. ⁓ You know, go prove it as quickly as you can. Jack Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. And that sort of takes me to another question that we get relatively often when people are just starting to to look into the patent filing process and what that entails is what is an office action and why are they so common? And you know, how many can someone generally expect to get? I know that's a a difficult question to answer, but if you could talk a little bit about that. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah, so as I said, they start the examination ⁓ on average 22 months without paying the expedited. There's a few minor instances where you can get expedited without paying. The biggest one is if one of the inventors is over the age of 65, then you can actually expedite ⁓ based on that without paying the $2,000. ⁓ Starting examination is typically that's when you expect to receive what's called an office action. ⁓ Now technically, well, what you want to receive is called a notice of allowance. And that says there's nothing that needs to be changed in this patent for it or this application for it to be issued as a patent. ⁓ Very small percent of applications get what they call first action allowance. The first action that's taken by the patent office is to say, you're good to go. ⁓ And so it's a very small percentage. So that means the vast majority get some kind of rejection. And they call the office actions non-final and final. I don't love the ⁓ naming that they've got. At the patent office, you've got Jack Dalton: Mm. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Provisional which means temporary application. So you've got non-provisional. So you have temporary and not temporary you have ⁓ Not final and final and even the word final final doesn't mean it's like Three strikes you're out. You're done. You're out of here. Get off the plate, you know, it's ⁓ You and and there are it's not uncommon that Jack Dalton: Right. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: You get the final office action usually as the second one. And what it mainly means is if you want them to examine it some more, you need to pay another fee. So you just pay a fee and that final becomes a non-final. essentially. basically you have Jack Dalton: Interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: as part of your application fee, have paid for examination time, that examiner's time for two office actions. And once they give the second one, they're like, nope, I don't do any more until my boss says you've paid more. you know. Jack Dalton: Yeah, that's that it makes sense. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: And some of the reasons, yeah, some of the reasons that are really common that we have office actions, it comes from understanding what it is a patent is. A patent, the rights are in a claim. A claim is a one sentence paragraph. The law says it has to be one sentence. So often it's this horrible, long run on sentence with lots of semicolons. ⁓ for someone to infringe your patent once it's allowed, they have to do everything that's in that claim. So if you have a claim that has 30 elements and somebody is doing 29 of those, they're not an infringer. So you actually wanna claim with as few elements as possible. But. Jack Dalton: Right. For the broadest protection. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: for the broadest protection. But the patent office is looking at it and saying, well, these five things together, well, these five things have all been done before. And three of them have been done here, and two of them have been done there. And so they often do an obviousness rejection. And ideally, when we search, if there's any one publication that shows all five of those, We're not going to file that claim. We're going to say, do you have a number six that makes it patentable, that's ⁓ not an obvious improvement, but a real inventive concept? And if you don't, then we'll go back to the drawing board or go forward without a patent. Those are options. ⁓ Jack Dalton: Yeah. Right. There are plenty of successful products out there that are not necessarily patented or they're not patented anymore. ⁓ but it is nice to have. It's an asset to your business. You can potentially lend against it. So it it makes sense in in the majority of situations in our experience. ⁓ going back to something you said a little earlier, you mentioned that often the the first couple of years are the most fruitful in terms of a patent. Is that because after maybe six, eight years, people have found ways to design around your very specific claims and they're able to offer similar products that don't infringe or or walk me through that? Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: And it definitely depends on industry, as I was saying, like pharmaceuticals, it's different. ⁓ And I don't know how much of it is designed around, but technology is moving faster and faster. And technology may come up with a new solution that ⁓ makes yours outdated. ⁓ That's the main, not necessarily their relevance. Jack Dalton: Okay. So it's mostly relevance. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Sometimes people say, you know, this is going to be irrelevant in three years. And I'm like, OK, you have to decide if the ⁓ patent process would be worth it. And it probably wouldn't for three years. ⁓ Market relevance. ⁓ So those are definitely part of the business decisions. And we can't see the future. ⁓ Jack Dalton: Right. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: We've predicted, how do I wanna say this? Everybody predicts the future when they wake up in the morning. And a lot of it, they get right. I'm going to eat breakfast today. I'm going to go to work. So there's a lot of things about the future we predict right all the time. And there's a lot that surprises us. Jack Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ absolutely there is. Yeah, gotcha. So moving into sort of one last topic here, sticking on the business side of things. There's two main business models that people have in mind generally when they consult with fifty-two launch. Either they want to take the product to market themselves, be CEO of their product-based company, and that is what we do. The other side is licensing and selling your idea or licensing your idea to another company who is going to sell that item and maybe give you a royalty or or whatever you work out with them. If you could talk a little bit about what you've seen ⁓ your clients do with the the ideas you've protected on their behalf. And we have thoughts on licensing and the relative difficulty of getting a licensing deal compared to going and selling the product yourself. But yeah, your thoughts on that. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah. One of my thoughts on that is the way the market has changed. So if you think way back to last century, before Amazon was huge and you had all these, everybody's on the internet. If you've got a business and you're not on the internet, it's like, what are you doing? And today, and so, That was a different time. And when you license an invention, I encourage people to really think about it as if that company is investing. They're an investor for you. What do investors want? They want high returns with low risks. That combination, you'll sell investors every day if you can deliver. Jack Dalton: ⁓ yeah. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: And so how do you have high return and low risk with your invention? Well, the risks of an invention is they might set up a factory and nobody buys it. So how do you reduce that risk? You set up a factory and you sell it to people and you show them people are buying this. That is, and if you think about not just your idea, but your competitor in licensing is the million other ideas that people have that they want to license to a company. And the company is going to pick the one that is the highest return and the lowest risk. So if you've got this amazing idea and they just need to invest a million dollars and they're going to be making a million dollars a day, but somebody else has an idea and It's already sold a million dollars of product. You're way behind. They're going to take that other one every day all the time. Yeah. And so, you know, I wish there was this great marketplace where people could just say, Hey, here's my idea. And there are patent auctions, you know, and things like that. But it's the main way I see is companies don't, they more often buy your business. Jack Dalton: Way behind. Mm-hmm. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: then buy, then license your product. ⁓ And so thinking about how do I build this business to sell it? E-Myth, if you haven't read E-Myth Revisited, you gotta read that one. So, yeah. So, you know, that's what E-Myth Revisited talks about is the only reason to build a business is to sell it. Jack Dalton: ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah. Highly recommend. Yeah. Buy it on Amazon. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: not necessarily the only reason, but you want that mindset of I'm building something that somebody else would be excited to pay money to step into. And it's not easy. ⁓ You need the right systems, you need the right setup, because there's plenty of entrepreneurs who end up ⁓ the job owning them instead of they own the job. Jack Dalton: We've seen it. Yeah, absolutely. No, certainly certainly our take on that is is very similar. That the days of having a great idea and going and getting it licensed as soon as you get a patent, those days are sort of behind us. It's it's just so much easier if you have some revenue numbers, if the product is in production already and you can go to a potential licensor with the numbers that are indisputable that you can You know, prove to them that this is gonna sell if you buy it from me. With your distribution, you could be selling ten times as many as I am. That's a that's a very straightforward conversation. But there's a lot of work behind it. And that's what we do every day here at fifty two launch is building product based businesses around the ideas of the inventors who came up with them. And yeah. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah. Yeah. And if you watch, you know, most everybody who's, ⁓ in the invention spaces, watch shark tank. What do those people want? It's essentially the same thing is they were going to be licensing and some of them really are basically saying, you know, I'm essentially going to license this. ⁓ it's the same conversation. Do people want it? What's What does it cost to make? I heard that there was somebody shared with me that a successful model in the past was to do all those pieces, do it all on paper, get it clear ⁓ that the market wants this. Here's my proof from research. The market will pay this much. Here's my proof from research. The cost of production. Here's my proof. from research, actually talking to factories and getting quotes and my cost of distribution and delivery. And basically you lay out and say, all of these costs add up to you making money. And even then when people bought that in the past, they're still gonna modify it. if one of the things to remember is the inventor has been sitting with this idea for a long time. You approach somebody else, this is brand new to them. To try to get them to want to sit with it and bring them up to speed, you've really got to have everything detailed out. And the more certainty you can put behind all of those numbers, the more likely they're going to say, I see it. I see what you got and what you're offering. I see the money. Jack Dalton: Exactly. You know, I say this to people in consultations sometimes. How often have you seen somebody get a deal on Shark Tank with zero dollars in revenue? It's you can look it up. It's happened a couple of times. It's happened two or three times in however many dozens of seasons they've done now. But it it's so hard of a sell with zero dollars in revenue compared to any revenue that Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: It's, it has happened. Yes. Thousands or yeah, thousands of pictures. Jack Dalton: just it makes sense to put it out there yourself and get started selling it. And that's what the two of us are here to help inventors and entrepreneurs do. So we'll kind of wrap it up there. Wayne, we very much appreciate you taking some time to do this. Your your expertise is in invaluable to our clients and I'm I'm sure to yours as well. So thank you very much. If you have a product idea Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: You're welcome. Jack Dalton: Reach out to fifty two launch, fill out our form. There's an NDA built in. Every conversation is confidential. Obviously the same thing with with Wayne and Inspired Idea Solutions. So Wayne, if you've got a place to direct people or other than the website, inspired ideasolutions.com. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: Yeah, they can schedule an initial consultation based off the website, inspiredideasolutions.com. And we have forms for you to fill out. And we're a law firm, so any information we discuss is confidential. All right. Jack Dalton: Awesome. Well, thank you for sticking around if you have stuck around this long, and we'll hope to hear from you at fifty two launch. Wayne Carroll (Patrent Attorne: All right, thanks so much. Jack Dalton: Thank you, Wayne.

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