Inventor

An Inventor creates and then sells Intangible assets such as patents and copyrights. Firms using this business model exclusively are relatively rare, but some technology firms generate part of their revenues this way. Example:

• Lucent’s Bell Labs (see patentsales.lucentssg.com).

Firms that license the use of their Intangible assets while still retaining ownership are not classified as Inventors; they are Intellectual Landlords (see below).