How much money can an invention make?

How much money can an invention make?

Spencer Brown (Inventor And Founder) gives expert video advice on: What makes a great invention?; Can I modify a patented product and call it an invention?; What's the difference between a great idea and an invention? and more...

Recently, as you know, Blackberry; the inventor of the data code, the compression technology that was used to enable people to text messages, had the invention taken from him and the payout was $400,000,000 and the judge threatened the manufacturer of Blackberry that if you don't pay this by today we're going to turn off the service. So $400,000,000 was the recent big win. It's not uncommon to see an invention take a $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 on the market. If you sell it to an industry, you can take less but then you can negotiate for royalties on the back end so you can get a little bit of money incrementally. You can also take your idea, sell it to a manufacturer and share in the profits which is like royalties but you're investing in being there to manufacture the product. And you're also representing the product and you might be on an infomercial pitching the product. So there's all different ways to make money from inventions, but a really really sharp idea; you can capture at least $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 and if it's a phenomenal idea, you can hit a couple hundred million.