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.