A friend has an excellent idea for a souvenir for our local professional sports team. She looked into patents and they are too expensive. Any ideas on how she can market her idea and get royalties from it?

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Unless you have the funds to defend a patent infringement or if you hope to sell your company (with the patents as part of the intellectual property), it’s not worth patenting.

Realize that even if your friend has a great idea, creates a prototype, and has potential clients sign a nondisclosure, there’s no guarantee that the client won’t simply copy the idea and produce it them self.

The problem arises when your friend wants to use another company’s copyrighted logo/image in their product. Unless the image is in the public domain, you’ll have to license it. To license it, you’ll have to explain how you want to use it, and show off your idea, and pay money.

Instead, your friend may want to approach a company that already produces souvenirs for the Brewers, and offer to license the idea to them.

Realize that her idea is just that – an idea. Someone eventually needs to implement it and mass produce it, which takes time and money.