A bit more detail
Enforcement
As explained in the section about filing and prosecuting your patent application, it may take anywhere from 1 to 3 years (or longer) for your patent application to issue as a U.S. Patent. Once issued, your patent carries with it much weight in court, and can be used to obtain an injunction and monetary damages if infringed. This means that you may seek the assistance of court in preventing others from making, using, and selling your patented invention. Typically, this requires suing the infringing party for patent infringement (referred to as litigation). Litigating a patent is an expensive and very involved process that can take many years to conclude. Luckily, there are other options for you as a patent holder, including licensing and assignment.
Licensing and assignment
License – As part of the right to stop others from making, using, and selling products and processes covered by the issued patent, the patent holder is also provided with the right to grant others the rights to make, use, and sell the products or processes covered by the patent. This is referred to as licensing the patent, and payments for licensing are referred to as royalties. Licensing may also be used to exchange rights with another patent holder so you are each provide with the right to make, use, or sell the other’s patented invention. This is commonly referred to as a cross-license.
Licensing your patent means that you continue to retain ownership of the patent. You are responsible for maintenance fees, and may need to defend the patent if another seeks to challenge its validity.
A license may be non-exclusive, in that the patent owner can license numerous different parties in parallel. Or, the license may be exclusive, meaning that you only grant the licensed party to make, use, or sell. This exclusivity may be territorial (e.g, only in certain regions of the U.S.), may be only as to certain rights (e.g., the right to make and use, but not the right to independently sell). The license may be exclusive for only a given period of time or only when certain conditions are met (e.g., when sales volumes exceed a certain target). As you can see, licensing provides many options for taking advantage of your patent rights.
Assignment – While licensing your patent means that you continue to retain ownership of the patent, assigning your patent is a complete transfer of the patent rights to a third party – essentially you are selling your patent. Based on it being a more complete transfer of rights, a patent assignment generally brings a higher price than patent licensing royalties.
There are many other transactions involving patents and patent applications (such as collaterization, interference, Federal Trade Commission actions, etc.), but licensing and assignment are perhaps the most common, and are transactions we are most often asked about. Please feel free to contact us if you have questions about transactions not addressed above.