One Thousand Ways to Make Money by Page Fox

selling of patent rights. The agent studies the lists that come out weekly in the “United States Patent Gazette,” and sends his circulars to those who have secured patents. The agent will charge from five to ten per cent., if he can arrange with a patentee for the sale of the patents. In other cases, he charges a fixed sum, which is paid in advance, and is considered an equivalent for his services whether or not he is successful in effecting a sale, on the same principle that doctors and lawyers are paid whether they gain or lose a case. In extent and profit, the business varies from the itinerant vender with half a dozen patents in his valise to the established business house with sub-agencies in all parts of the world. What the profits are in the latter situation may be judged from a single case in the former, where a traveling man received as commission on a single patent sold the sum of $5,000.