Product Development, Licensing and Commercialization Assistance

Developing and protecting innovations and inventions is an important first step.  The next phase of commercialization may be the most important, which is either developing a start-up business, making, selling or promoting products or services, or alternatively licensing third parties who might already have existing distribution or business relationships so as to get the product into the hands of users or consumers.

With regards to licensing, we have a tremendous amount of experience helping clients find potential licensees and have extensive resources to not only package your innovation in a way most likely to be received by potential licensees, but also help you determine some of the licensing factors and market conditions which would effect your ability to successfully license your innovation.  Whether it is using extensive feasibility analysis, market studies or finding potential licensees in different markets and promoting the innovation to these potential licensees, we can help you take the next steps necessary to monetize and profit from your innovation.

Typically, the first step is to package your invention or develop your innovation in a way and manner in which the market or customers might view your innovation.  This may be entirely different from how you view your innovation from a legal protection standpoint. Clearly, legal protections must be set up and established prior to any type of commercialization so that you can protect what it is that you hope to license.  Cislo & Thomas is expert at coming up with a variety of different ways to protect your innovations using patents, copyrights, trademarks, domain name protection, trade secret protection, trade dress protection, mask works and various other ways of protecting your creations.

Oftentimes, prototyping the product either in reality, such as creating physical specimens, or alternatively creating realistic working three-dimensional virtual models is a way to further develop the innovation. Cislo & Thomas can help you interface with its stable of model makers, prototype manufacturers and advanced three-dimensional CAD designers to create true to life consumer-friendly products.

The next phase is to find high value potential licensing targets.  These are typically company presidents, vice presidents of marketing and various companies who already have a strong presence in the market or niche where your innovation would likely be practiced.  Typically, these are companies who are already selling similar products or selling in similar categories that would be most attracted to your innovation because they have experience with their customer base who might be excited about your advancement and product innovation.

We can help you communicate in a language that would be helpful to them and present and prepare communications and promotions directly to them in their language, focusing on their customer interests, so as to commence a dialogue and potential licensing negotiation.  This is a true art because it is important to get these decision makers interested and attracted to the invention or innovation in a way that would resonate with their customers and their customer base.

We have experience with this and would be more than happy to help you in crafting these messages and disseminating this promotional solicitation to the refined target list of potential licensees.  As part of this process or in advance of this process we can also undertake a feasibility review and grading of your innovation through marketing consultants working with the United States Department of Commerce to promote innovation.  This group can provide actual ranking and analysis of your improvement using their proprietary algorithms and experience in developing and analyzing product innovations.

We can also list you in various databases which make your innovation available for potential manufacturers to review and possibly license through the Department of Commerce and other third-party databases where manufacturers are looking for proprietary products that they can manufacture here in the U.S. and abroad.

We look forward to helping you concerning taking the next step to seeking financial reward for your innovation once intellectual property protection has commenced.

The commercialization work that we undertake is through our who work along the following manners in the following stages of development.

1.         Initial product review, analysis and consumer benefits, considerations;

2.         Feasibility study and analysis through the department of commerce and entry into licensing database manufacturers;                                     

3.        Development of solicitation materials and exhibits for soliciting licensees;                          

4.         Investigation and research on potential licensees for a particular industry and ranking of potential licensees;

5.         Design and have made a prototype of the product, either an actual physical prototype or a virtual prototype in 3-dimension;

6.         Dissemination of solicitations and promotion and follow-up communication with all licensee targets;

7.         Licensing negotiations and consummation of licensing agreement;

8.         Subsequent auditing and following up with licensees to determine proper royalty payments and compliance with licensing terms;

These are the difference stages and phases that we would normally expect and you can have us undertake some or all of these with regards to your innovation.  Also, these are things that you might want to consider undertaking yourself or alternatively using some other third party, however, this is something that we can offer you and assist you in taking the next step to commercializing your intellectual property.

We look forward to helping you concerning these important next steps in your innovation progress.