Companies buy solved problems, not ideas. To sell one you need three things in hand before you make contact: a filed patent application, a one-page sell sheet with a working prototype photographed on it, and a landed cost estimate. Then you pick a route. Large companies take submissions through open innovation portals under a submission agreement written entirely in their favor. Mid-size companies take them through a person, usually a product manager or a category buyer. Both routes require signing away most of the protection you assume you have, and the reason the filed application comes first is that the agreement will not protect you.
This post covers the routes, what the submission agreement says, what companies will and will not sign, and what a realistic response looks like.
The Three Routes In
Open innovation portal. Most large consumer goods, tool, and housewares companies run one. You create an account, click through a submission agreement, and upload a description. The portal exists to route unsolicited ideas away from product teams and into a legal-safe intake process. Submissions are reviewed, but the volume is high and the bar is set for products that are close to launch-ready.
A named person. A product manager, a category director, a buyer, or a licensing manager. This route converts at a far higher rate than the portal, because a person who asked to see something reads it differently than an intake queue does. Getting to that person is the work: trade shows, industry associations, a warm introduction, or a licensing agent who already has the relationship.
A licensing agent or representation firm. Someone who takes the product to companies on your behalf and is paid from what the deal produces. The advantage is existing relationships and a filter that companies trust. The thing to check is the fee structure, because a legitimate arrangement is weighted toward contingency rather than upfront fees. Enhance handles licensing representation on a contingency basis for this reason.
The portal is the lowest-friction route and the lowest-yield one. The named person is the opposite. Most inventors should do both, in that order, because a portal submission costs an afternoon.
What the Submission Agreement Says
Every portal puts a click-through agreement in front of you. They vary in wording and agree on substance. The clauses to expect:
| Clause | What it means |
|---|---|
| No confidential relationship | Nothing you submit is treated as confidential. The company owes you no duty of secrecy. |
| No obligation to review or respond | They may discard it without reading it and owe you no explanation. |
| Independent development reserved | If they were already working on something similar, or develop it later, they owe you nothing. |
| Compensation only under a separate signed agreement | No implied contract arises from submission or from their use of the material. |
| Rights limited to issued patents | Many agreements state that they will only consider compensation for subject matter covered by an issued patent or a pending application. |
| Return of materials waived | They are not obligated to return or destroy what you send. |
| Governing law and venue | Their state, their courts. |
Read that table again and note what it means for an unprotected idea. If you submit a concept with nothing on file, you have handed over the disclosure and kept none of the bargaining position. The agreement says so in plain terms.
This is not a trick. It is a company protecting itself from a real problem: hundreds of similar submissions a year against products already in their pipeline. The response is to file first. A provisional application costs $130 to $325 in government fees at small entity rates and takes the risk out of the disclosure. The USPTO provisional application guidance covers what it does and how long it lasts.
What Companies Will and Will Not Sign
They will not sign your NDA. Close to universally, for unsolicited submissions. A large company that signed inventor NDAs would be unable to develop in its own categories without litigation risk on every launch. Sending an NDA with a first contact reads as inexperience and it usually ends the conversation.
They will sign an NDA later, sometimes. Once a specific product is under active evaluation and a named person is championing it, a mutual confidentiality agreement for that evaluation is normal. The sequence is submission under their terms, interest, then an NDA for the detailed technical exchange.
They will sign an option agreement. If they want time to evaluate without committing, they pay for an exclusive evaluation window. Option payments in consumer categories commonly run in the low thousands to low tens of thousands for a 6 to 12 month window, credited against future royalties.
They will sign a license. Consumer housewares deals commonly land at 3% to 7% of net sales, tools and hardware at 3% to 6%, toys at 5% to 10%. The full breakdown by category is in patent royalty rates by industry. Rates alone do not determine the value of a deal. The definition of net sales, the minimum annual payments, and the termination clauses do at least as much work, which is why what is inside a standard patent license agreement is worth reading before the first call rather than after.
What You Need Before You Submit
Five items. A submission missing any of them reads as early-stage and gets filed accordingly.
1. A filed application. Provisional at minimum. This is what makes the disclosure survivable and what most submission agreements point to when they discuss compensation. The requirements for each application type are set out in the USPTO patent basics material.
2. A working prototype. Not a rendering. Companies evaluate whether a thing functions, and a video of it functioning answers more questions than twenty pages of description.
3. A one-page sell sheet. One page. A product image, the problem in one line, the solution in two, three benefit bullets, the patent status, and your contact information. No paragraphs. The construction is laid out in how to make an invention sell sheet.
4. A landed cost estimate. What the product costs to make at volume, including tooling amortization and freight. Companies work backward from retail price through their margin structure. If your cost puts the product above the category’s shelf price, the conversation ends there, and knowing that in advance saves both of you.
5. A reason it belongs in their line. Which existing product it sits next to, which gap it fills, which competitor it answers. A submission that could have gone to any company in the category signals it did.
What Happens After You Submit
The intake side of the process is worth understanding, and it is covered in detail in what happens when you submit an invention. The compressed version:
Portal submissions get logged and screened by someone whose job is to reject most of them. The screen is fast and mechanical: is it in a category we sell, is it protected, is it manufacturable at our cost target, is it different from what we already have. Anything that fails one of those four gets a form response.
What advances goes to a category or product manager for a real look. That look takes weeks to months, because it competes with the work of shipping products already in the plan. Timelines of three to nine months from submission to a substantive answer are normal in consumer goods, and longer in categories with regulatory content.
Plan on no reply from most submissions. That is the base case, not a signal about the product. Portals receive far more than they can respond to individually, and a form rejection is the more common outcome than a conversation. The submissions that convert usually do so because a person inside the company was already looking for that solution, which is the argument for working the named-person route in parallel rather than waiting on the queue.
If the answer is no, a rejection often reflects portfolio fit, timing, or an internal project you cannot see rather than a judgment on the product. Ask which of the four screening criteria it failed. Some reviewers will tell you, and that answer is worth more than the submission was.
Sell Outright or License
Two structures, and the choice affects everything about how you present.
Outright sale (assignment). You transfer the patent rights for a single payment. The advantage is certainty and a clean exit. The disadvantage is that you are paid once, before anyone knows how the product performs, so the buyer’s risk discount comes out of your number. Assignments should be recorded with the USPTO within three months of execution, which puts the transfer in the public record and protects the buyer against a later purchaser.
License. You keep the patent and are paid a running royalty on sales, usually with minimum annual payments and a term tied to the patent life. Most independent inventor deals in consumer categories are structured this way.
A common middle structure is an option leading to a license: a modest option payment for an exclusive evaluation window, credited against royalties if they proceed. That structure lets a company do real diligence without committing, and it gets you paid for the wait.
The Follow-Up Discipline
Submit, then track. A spreadsheet with the company, the route, the date, the person, the agreement version, and the response. Follow up once at four weeks and once at ten, then stop.
Work multiple companies at the same time. Sequential submission wastes years, and there is nothing in a standard submission agreement that prohibits parallel submissions. What you cannot do is grant exclusivity to two parties, which is a different thing and only becomes relevant at the option stage.
Keep a record of every disclosure with dates. That record matters if a product appears later that looks like yours, and it costs nothing to maintain. The protections worth locking in before any of this starts are set out in protections to lock in before submitting, and the wider set of questions inventors ask at this stage is collected in inventor questions answered.
FAQ
Can I sell an idea to a company without a patent?
You can submit one, and companies will read it under an agreement stating they owe you nothing. Without a filed application there is no property right to sell, no bargaining position in a negotiation, and no compensation trigger under most submission agreements. A provisional at $130 to $325 in small entity fees is the cheapest way to change that before you make contact.
Will a company sign an NDA before looking at my idea?
Not for an unsolicited submission. Large companies decline inventor NDAs as a standing policy because signing them would expose their own development work in the same category. NDAs become available later, once a named person is evaluating a specific product and a mutual agreement covers that exchange. Sending one with first contact usually ends the conversation.
How long does a company take to respond?
Three to nine months to a substantive answer in consumer goods, longer where regulatory review is involved. Many submissions receive no response at all. Follow up once at four weeks and once at ten, keep working other companies in parallel, and treat silence as a routing outcome rather than a verdict on the product.
What royalty should I ask for?
Do not open with a number. Let the company propose a structure, then evaluate it against category norms: 3% to 7% of net sales in consumer housewares, 3% to 6% in tools and hardware, 5% to 10% in toys. Read the definition of net sales before reacting to the rate, because deductions can move the effective number by a full point.
Is it better to sell the idea or license it?
License, in most independent inventor cases, because a running royalty keeps you connected to how the product performs and the patent stays yours if the licensee stops selling. An outright assignment makes sense when you want a clean exit, when the buyer needs full ownership to invest in the category, or when the product has a short life cycle where a single payment is cleaner than years of accounting.