opulation will likely
want their inventions, and to enable them to estimate prices. In
estimating the price to ask for a patent, patentees should not conceive
and hang their hopes upon fabulous prices and immediate wealth, which
too often dooms ambitious inventors to bitter disappointment; they
should rather endeavor to look at their inventions from the purchaser's
stand-point, and try to see it in the light in which others view it. It
may be well to remember that the million mark of patents issued in the
United States, including re-issues and designs, was passed in 1911, and
it is quite probable that any one inventor may not have the only good
thing in the line of patents.

[Sidenote: How Rating for Royalty Is Figured.]

Many patents are more profitable by being placed upon royalty than by
any other means, and quite often the patent can be placed this way when
it is not possible to sell outright at a satisfactory price. In
determining what royalty the patentee should receive, he should
carefully estimate, in connection with the probable number of sales,
what profit the manufacturer can probably make on each, or a number of
the articles containing the patented improvements, and should require
about twenty-five per cent. of the profits as royalty. Another method
used by some inventors is to ascertain the price at which the article
can be retailed, and figure the royalty at between one-twentieth and
one-tenth of the retail price. Either of the above should give the
approximate figure to ask for exclusive royalty contracts. For
non-exclusive rights the patentee should ask about one-half of that for
exclusive rights.

[Sidenote: Stock in Stock Companies.]

There is another class of patents that can be best realized from by
organizing the proper kind of joint stock companies, and manufacturing
the invention, the inventor taking a certain amount of the stock and
assigning the patent to the company. The patentee should receive between
one-fourth and one-half of the capital stock in consideration of his
assigning his patent and rights to the company.

The inventor should see that a good portion of the stock is subscribed
for and the amount actually paid into the treasury of the company before
making the assignment. As a rule, inventors' stock is full paid and
non-assessable.

[Sidenote: Prices for Territorial Rights.]

In calculating the prices for territorial rights, the application of the
invention to that section mu