| Licensing, Technology Transfers, |
In some technical areas licensees are all ladies and gentlemen of substance and positive repute who pay promptly, report honestly and use the technology as agreed upon in the license. They need technical support, but are otherwise a thoroughgoing delight.
However, there are other networks of potential licensees who bear governance. They pay reluctantly; the cost of collection is often high; their quality control leads to a significant amount of litigation over warranty claims and failed performance.
If you live only among the virtuous, then you use one kind of license agreement. If you live with those in the second group, or with a mixed bag network of licensees, then you ought to know better than to use a licensing system that is not specifically engineered to mitigate the burdens of governance, including that of getting yourself paid.
If you find yourself, as a licensor, lamenting the frustration of difficult licensee system management, it may be in large measure due to the fact that you use the same license agreement and licensee network management system for the best and the worst groups of licensees. If your license agreement isn't strong enough because you don't wish for it to seem offensive to your best licensees, and if you insist upon using the same "form" agreement with everybody notwithstanding the disparity among licensees vis-a-vis their integrity, you may expect the rest of your licensing life to remain vexatious.
Ask yourself the following questions.
1. Is my system for vetting potential licensees realistic, or am I simply accepting anyone who says he has an initial fee?
2. Do I have to use the same licensing agreement for all groups of licensees, or can I elect to choose from a range of licensing terms to suit the particulars of different situations?
3. When is the last time I actually sat down and evaluated how I select licensees and how much difficulty I have with some of them and what I might do to make life more easily manageable?
4. Am I managing my licensing network on the theory that the bad actors are getting all the attention?
5. Would I like to consider outsourcing the vetting of new licensees and the management of the licensing system in general, leaving me and my productive capacity to do what my company does best, work with the technology?
The more of these questions you answer in the affirmative, the more rapidly it will appear to you that a fresh look, an analytical look, at your licensing system probably has a high potential to increase the quality of your life.
Copyright 1997 - 2008 || Richard A. Solomon
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 | Licensing, Technology Transfers, |