New sponsor - www.inventioneers.com - feedback and discussion

[Ovidiu]

Hey guys! After a lengthy idea development and website building process, I'm finally ready to release this website for everyone! I have 2 great co-founders, lawyers specializing in commercial licensing and intellectual property protection respectively.

Here's the website address: www.inventioneers.com

A few notes about how the website works:
A few notes about how the website works:

we have 3 different license types, "exclusive", "non exclusive" and "measurements only" (last one is for things like 3D scanning)
we are using configurable templates for these licenses; these license templates are designed to cover most cases and offer fair protections to both parties, while being relatively simple to set up;
as a licensor, you are in control of the general terms and conditions that you offer for potential licensees, as well as the valuation of your products
a licensee can "evaluate" a product, which entails the signature of and NDA and gives them access to the confidential data for the product;
within 30 days of the start of the evaluation period, a licensee can enter a licensing agreement
the royalties and other payments, essentially the servicing of the contract is done via the website


A few notes on pricing:

No upfront costs, no monthly fees; it costs nothing to make an account, and it costs nothing to upload and store products and product data on the website
The website takes a percentage of all the payments that are made through the website. Currently, this percentage is 30%.


There's a few more things listed in the FAQ here: https://www.inventioneers.com/faq/
The FAQ is still a work in progress, but we do have the most important questions answered there already. The website is otherwise ready to use.

I would love to hear some feedback from you guys if you think this could be useful for you, reservations that you may have, any suggestions or questions.

[Ovidiu]

So it's been a while since I've posted this, and I haven't gotten much traction so far.

I understand that this is a very specialized market so to speak, but maybe do you guys have any ideas for advertising, or even contacts that might be interested? I am thinking shops that maybe have some 3D scanned older cars, or low volume parts that we could help bring to market?

Any feedback is appreciated, and feel free to PM me as well.

[nickcornilsen]

What makes this different than GrabCAD and the other 3D model sites out there?

Serious question, not ment to be snarky.

[Ovidiu]

What makes this different than GrabCAD and the other 3D model sites out there?

Serious question, not ment to be snarky.
Oh no problem, I'm glad to answer any question at all, including pricing, etc...

In short, what makes us different is the licenses, namely that ours are created specifically for commercial use. The other sites you mention use a Creative Commons license, which is free to use for non commercial applications, but prohibits any sort of commercial use.

While Creative Commons is a great license that promotes open sharing of technology. A few things we're trying to improve with our website:

As an engineering / product development company, what is your incentive to share a design for a part? A commercial licensing agreement, that you can enter into through our website, allows you to get a monetary compensation per unit manufactured
As a manufacturing company, you are legally not allowed to sell products that you get the designs through a Creative Commons license. Through our website, you pay the creator a licensing fee and you can sell products based on the design.
If you want to go into commercial licensing, how do you make sure you get a "fair" contract? Normally these licensing contracts are reserved for large volumes of parts, and the contracts are negotiated by lawyers from both sides, which is very expensive upfront. Our contracts are designed to be "fair" for both contracting parties, clear, while protecting the IP involved. All of that, for 0 upfront cost.


We have no exclusivity restrictions and encourage using Creative Commons on some of the other sites you've mentioned.

[Ovidiu]

Made it to the SEMA Launch Pad semi-finals. Just filmed the spot in Vegas on Monday, hope I can get get some votes from you guys when the facebook competition starts July 30th!

https://www.sema.org/sema-enews/2018/26/2018-sema-launch-pad-semi-finalists-announced