ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Patent monetization

Okay kiddo, imagine you have a toy that nobody else has. It's one of a kind and you really love playing with it. Other kids might want to play with it too, but you don't want to share. So instead, you decide to let them play with it but they have to pay you some money for the privilege.

This is kind of like what happens with patents. A patent is a special piece of paper that says someone has come up with an idea for something new and unique, like a toy. If you have a patent, it means that nobody else can make that same toy without your permission for a certain amount of time, usually around 20 years.

But sometimes the person who came up with the idea doesn't want to actually make the toy themselves. They might not have the money or skills to do it, or maybe they're just more interested in coming up with new ideas. So instead, they can sell or rent out their patent to someone else who does want to make the toy and sell it to other people.

This is called patent monetization, which is just a fancy way of saying making money from your patent. The person who owns the patent can make money from it by either selling it outright to someone else, or by licensing it out to multiple companies who want to use the patent to make their own toys.

Sometimes companies that make a lot of money from their patents are called "patent trolls" because they don't actually make anything themselves, but just make money by licensing their patents to other companies. But sometimes the person who owns the patent is actually the one who came up with the idea in the first place, and they just don't have the resources to make the toy themselves, so they need to make money some other way.

In any case, the important thing to remember is that if you come up with a really cool and unique idea for something, like a toy or a machine or something, you can get a patent that gives you the exclusive right to make or license that thing for a certain amount of time. And if you don't want to actually make the thing yourself, you can sell or rent out your patent to someone who does, and make money that way. It's kind of like being a landlord for your own ideas!