Subvertising and advertising culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Subvertising and advertising culture - Essay Example Subvertising is a blend of two words â€Å"subvert† and â€Å"advertising†.It is about making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements,so as to make a statement. Subverts take the form of a new image of an existing image or icon generally, in a satirical manner. It is also a meme hack and a part of social hacking or culture jamming (Posner 1982). It mimics the look and feel of the targeted ad and the viewers suddenly realize they have been duped. Their primary goal is to damage political candidates and campaigns, corporations and other targets. Subverts create cognitive dissonance by cutting through the hype  and glitz of mediated reality and, momentarily, reveals a deeper truth within." History In 1972, the logo of Richard Nixon's reelection campaign posters were subvertised with two x's in Nixon's name (as in the Exxon logo). It referred to the corporate ownership of the Republican party. In 1977, The Billboard Liberation Front, used this techniq ue in San Francisco  . After the U.S. presidential election of 2000, John Kanis, a supporter of the Republicans, designed a saying "Sore Loserman" to mock Democratic party candidates Gore-Lieberman. However, the Supreme Court, halted the process. Over the years, no large organization or brand, has managed to escape the wrath of subvertising. Examples of such targets include Ford, Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, BMW, Visa, Nike, Marlboro, Smirnoff, Absolute Vodka, Benetton, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and a horde of the other best brands in the world. Even politicians and other celebrities like Richard Nixon, George Bush, John F Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Paris Hilton have not been spared. Subvertising vs advertising (Advertising is any paid) form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor. (Subvertising refers to the) practice of making spoofs and parodies of corporate and political advertisements. The following table draws up a compar ison and a contrast of the two concepts. \Advertising Subvertising Paid form Unpaid form Non-personal in nature Non-personal in nature Promotes goods, services Depromotes goods, services Sponsor identified Unidentified Creative Destructive Promotes brand building Encourages brand killing Encourages consumption of goods and services Discourages consumption of goods and services Humorous Satiric Positive message Negative message Initiated by marketers Initiated by anti-consumerists Wide reach and long lasting appeal Wide reach but short-lived appeal Benefits outweigh disadvantages Effects doubtful Positive publicity Negative publicity Subvertising - Strengths and weaknesses Subvertising does enjoy a host of advantages. They are: 1. Attention grabbers 2. Highly creative 3. Positive intent 4. Can be used for good causes 5. Promotes sustainable consumption 6. Highly inexpensive 7. Easy to create Subvertising is popular, essentially, due to its tremendous attention grabbing effect. It sho cks the viewer into a moment of reflection and thought. Obviously, subverts are highly creative. Parody and spoofery does require a lot of brain racking and though the individual does not have to create the subvert from scratch, unless it is very creative, the spoof will miserably fail. Though the subvert is negative in nature and tone, the intent behind the act is, can be, positive. The purpose is to make the viewer think about the negative aspects of advertising and create a positive influence. Though, most or almost all the time, Subverts are used for wrong purposes or causes, at times, good cause subvertising also exists. Subverts on smoking advertisements, promoting sustainable consumption, Greenpeace initiatives are a handful of cause-related subvertising examples. Advertising, essentially, encourages limitless consumption, for purposes of sales and revenue generation. Subvertising on the contrary forces us to think of sustainable consumption in harmony with nature. Since Subv erts need only to mimic the advertisement and bring

Richardsons Pamela or Viture Rewarded Essay Example for Free

Richardsons Pamela or Viture Rewarded Essay A book can be moral if it raises moral questions even if it doesnt provide moral answers. That is the view of Marilyn Edelstein, associate professor of English at Santa Clara University. Morality is a widespread term used in literature from the early beginnings. The writer uses the moral perspective to discuss the corruption of the society or even the era in which he lives as a whole, to provide moral lessons and help to replace vice with virtue. There are many writers used to present moral lessons through their literary works. For example, Samuel Richardson is one of the most popular and admired writers of his time. Richardson’s Pamela is considered the best example to reveal about the moral element in literature. So let us shed lights on the moral element through Richardson’s Pamela. Many of the objections to Samuel Richardsons Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded have come about because of its alleged middle-class morality. Samuel Richardson wrote Pamela as an example of the value of moral behavior. Believing in the direct intervention of God, Richardson felt that virtuous actions led to success on earth as well as in heaven. The Novel was praised for its psychological veracity and its moral influence on the readers. Pamela is the symbol of morality in Richardsons Pamela or virtue rewarded. Pamela is a 15 years old servant girl who struggles to keep her virginity. During the past three years, Pamela has been serving the kindly Mrs. B but unfortunately she just died and her son Mr. Squire B takes control of the house hold. He begins to flatter Pamela but she resists all his attempts to seduce her. In letters to her parents Pamela reports her Master’s attempts and vows that she will suffer any injury or social penalty rather than sacrifice her chastity. Her parents encourage this devotion to her virtue and advise her to leave Mr. B. ’s employment and return to home and poverty if ever Mr. B. makes a physical attempt on her. In spite of Mr. B. ’s continued harassment, Pamela does not manage to make the departure that she so frequently threatens. Finally, she resolves to go and, having resisted a final effort of Mr. B. to tempt her with money for her parents and marriage to a clergyman, packs her bags to leave. Unfortunately her attempt to escape Mr. Bs harassments fails because she was kidnapped and taken to Lincolnshire estate. As soon as she reaches the estate she planes to escape. Even though Mr. Bs several attempts to rape Pamela of her virtue, she has never stopped fighting back. Pamela is willing to protect her virginity no matter what. Pamela continues writing letters while in captivity, but as she does not know when she will be able to send them, she dispenses with salutations and signatures, so that they run together into one continuous journal. Pamela finds help in the character of Mr. Williams. Mr. Williams fails to deliver Pamelas letters to her family. Mr. B realizes the true self of Pamela through her letters. He admires her character and virtue which eventually led to his proposal to Pamela. Pamelas virtue is finally rewarded through Mr. Bs honest proposal of marriage. Pamelas virtue affected the young Miss Goodwin who is Mr. Bs daughter from a previous affair. Pamela succeeds in establishing the moral character of Miss Goodwin, who does not repeat her mother’s mistakes. The virtue described in Pamela was of a much broader and more significant scope. Pamelas effort to co-ordinate her human drives and the moral code she had learned represented the real conflict in Pamela. To the extent that her behavior was morally acceptable, she was virtuous. Pamelas ability to do what was right in spite of her own desires was the virtue Richardson intended to reward.

Assessing The Background Of Saddam Hussein Politics Essay

Assessing The Background Of Saddam Hussein Politics Essay The history of Saddam Hussein and his leadership capabilities started up in small village on the outskirts of the city of Tikrit (G.Butt [7]) where he was born in 1937 and grew up facing the atmosphere of anti-British attitude represented by people at that time. He had a very hard childhood, however he managed to get his basic education at school. When he was 20 years old, a young king Faisal II was killed by general Kasim and a group of army officers who overthrew a weak monarchy that had been introduced by the British three decades earlier. Saddam Hussein was introduced to politics by his uncle Chajrullach and became an active member of Bath party. After an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate general Kasim, he had to escape from the country. In 1963, general Kassim was overthrown by Bath party which enabled Saddam to return from emigration and take over the duties of a person responsible for Bath party internal security. After 8 months of general instability and political murders, the government of Bath party fell down which forced Saddam Hussein to get into underground. Five years later, Bath party returned. This time, it was much better prepared for taking over the power. The new president Al Bakr wanted to introduce a democratic system in Iraq and appointed Saddam to become the head of secret police as nobody else wanted to take over this particular position considered to be a dirty job (S.K. Aburish, [5]) . Saddam Hussein worked hard on reinforcing the security forces which eliminated political elites of all political options using the most cruel methods such as tortures and murders. A year later, in 1969, he was appointed the countrys vice-president. He was still responsible for security and special forces in which he used to employ people from Al Bu Nasir tribe, i.e the tribe to which he belonged. By providing the poor and uneducated men with the well paid job of security agents he was able to establish a group of fully trusted supporters who helped him to clean up the environment from opponents and enemies (Gazeta PL [9]). After ten years, this, in fact, enabled Saddam Hussein the to take over the total power and govern Iraq. In 1979, he arrested Hasan al Bakr and became the president of Iraq. Under the pretext of fighting with traitors who wanted to give up Iraq to Syria, he arrested, tortured and killed hundreds of Revolutionary Council and Bath party members. The climate of political crime and murders did not disturb him in the development of his international career (T.Kjeilen [8]). Even though Iraq was in alliance with Soviet Union, Saddam Hussein still maintained the relations with the Western countries. Owing to rapidly growing income from oil sale in 1970s (Britannica Online Encyclopedia [15]), Iraq under the leadership of Bath party controlled by Saddam Hussein introduced an ambitious plan of developing a modern industry and agriculture to reduce the volume of imported products, and improving the infrastructure (transpor tation, water and electric energy supply, health services). Iraq started to be regarded as a growing economy and one of the economic powers in the region. All these caused that Saddam Hussein, instead of using the revolutionary ideology to get support for his actions, could use the arguments of economic development. He started to consider himself as a leader of all the Arab countries (Wikipedia [10]). However, even though many modern industrial facilities were established, e.g. modern cement plants were built up, production efficiency could only be achieved with the assistance of international experts since the local labour was highly inefficient (authors own observations). This led to situation that Iraqi products could hardly compete on foreign markets. Also due to the fact that there were huge needs for infrastructure, the government could hardly reach the planned goals even though the funds were available. Saddam Hussein needed something else to reinforce his position. The Islam ic revolution in Iran caused that Saddam Hussein was provided with the international support, especially the USA, who wanted to stop the development of Islamic fanaticism. This led to the outbreak of the Iraqi-Iranian war during which Saddam Hussein built up the arsenal of all the different weapons that made Iraq become the Middle East military power. This was followed by invasion on Kuwait in 1990 which ended up with the Gulf War. It was noticed by J.Hickman [11] that regimes could rarely survive losing one war, and in case of Saddams government there were two wars one after another, therefore he posed a question of what were the leadership secrets of Saddam Hussein that allowed him to stay in power. In the following chapter I will try to answer this question by analysing the leadership features of the Iraqi dictator. 3. Key leadership capabilities of the Iraqi leader In order to define the key leadership capabilities, it would be necessary to find an answer to the question: what features were represented by Saddam Hussein that made him an effective leader in the Middle East and Iraq during the 3 decades of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s? According to Stoner and Wankel [1], the effective leaders possess certain features or properties such as charisma, the ability to anticipate the events and the ability to convince people in order to get their support. A.Sharplin [2] discusses the trait approach to leadership based on a believe that the leaders who are effective possess some particular features that other people do not have such as physical strength, stamina, size, intelligence, integrity, wisdom, etc. Kouzes and Posner [12] analyse how the leaders mobilize other people to do extraordinary things, what practices they use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewar ds. All of the above mentioned features base on the behaviour of the leaders. J.B.Avolio at al [4] made an attempt to group all the different leadership features in order to define 3 groups of leadership styles including transformational leadership, transactional leadership and corrective avoidant leadership. Following Freuds theory of personality types, M.Maccoby [16] focused on description of narcissistic leaders, features of which can also be attributed to the former Iraqi leader. Therefore, what features or leadership styles can we allocate to Saddam Hussein. In the following subsections I will try to analyse Saddams leadership strengths and weaknesses: 3.1. Leadership strengths of Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein definitely represented an autocratic leadership style which, in fact, was the only possible way to govern the country consisting of Kurds and Arabs who additionally subscribed to two opposing branches of Islamic religion, i.e. Sunni and Shia Muslims (G.Butt, [7]). This is particularly visible nowadays taking into consideration the difficulties faced by the USA and other Western countries who try to implement the democratic rules into this very conservative and politically shattered country. Said K.Aburish [6] identified a number of strong leadership features represented by Saddam Hussein including: extraordinary ability to see the overall picture of future achievements that allowed him to get to the desired vision, good organizers skills which was something special in the Arab mentality functioning in the environment of the Middle East this caused that he had a broad potential and was much better visible when compared to other Arab leaders, ability to get the control over planned activities by surrounding himself with relatives and basing on family and tribal connections as those that could be trusted, ability to work long hours, enormous popularity even though he was a dictator he was able to provide the Iraqis, especially in 1970s and mid 1980s, with what they expected and needed, i.e. wealth, infrastructure and prospects. good learners skills as he read a lot and listened to a variety of people. J.Hickman [11] identified some other features of Saddam Husseins leadership strength such as: understanding of the value of state terror, development of a cult around his person, appreciation of the political value of relatives and close friends, ability to get the peoples acceptance for extremely risky decisions such as declaring war against the neighbouring countries or fighting the minorities, ability to exploit the international public opinion by getting support of the Muslims from all over the world and attracting the attention of others to unfair punishment of the Iraqi nation by the economic sanctions. It seems that narcissism was the leadership strength of Saddam Hussein. According to M.Maccoby [16] the narcissistic leaders become great charismatic leaders due to the fact that they have fascinating visions which get them supporters. Maccoby classifies narcissistic leaders among the people who have widespread imagination and try to create the future instead of trying to understand the future. However, he noticed that having the vision is not enough as the psychiatric patients also have visions. In case of Saddam Hussein the ability of using rhetoric and ability to arouse enthusiasm among the followers seems to be this additional feature. 3.2. Leadership weaknesses of Saddam Hussein There have been several important leadership weaknesses that brought Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the disaster. One of the most evident weak points has been the susceptibility to intimidate the people when governing the country. On one side, he had a strong security apparatus which was indicated as strength but on the other hand, by using terror he did not get the acceptance of, at least, a part of the Iraqi society. Ability to take risky decisions could have been classified as one of the strengths but, if related to the ability to make mistakes, both constitute the leadership weakness. This was the case with the involvement into the Iran/Iraq war which produced a debt of 65-100 billion USD (S.K. Aburish [6]). Even though Saddam declared the victory, he was unable to provide the Iraqi people with the fruits of this victory which led him to another mistake of invading Kuwait. Therefore, one of the serious weaknesses was Saddams ability of leading people in the wrong direction. Narcissism was mentioned in the previous subsection to constitute one of Saddams leadership strengths. However, it can also be one of the weaknesses which was the case of the former Iraqi leader. According to Maccoby [16], narcissistic leaders only accept the desired information. They love giving the speeches and are dominant during the meetings with subordinates. They are very sensitive to any criticism and react violently. In case of Saddam Hussein, any criticism was punished with the death sentence which led to situation of being completely isolated from reality. This also caused that the number of people he could trust was getting smaller and smaller (S.K. Aburish [6]). 3.3. Analysis of Saddams leadership capabilities and styles Looking at different leadership features of Saddam Hussein, following Bass and Steidlmeier [14], it can be stated that the Iraqi leader represented a mixture of transformational and transactional leadership style as most of the leaders do. Such features as charisma and vision could place the former Iraqi leader among those who represent the transformational leadership style as he tried and managed to get his supporters involved and committed to his visions. On the other hand, if we were to attribute the leadership style to Saddam Hussein, transactional style seems to be more appropriate as he used to motivate his followers by reward (offering well paid jobs and other benefits to his supporters) and punishment (putting people to prison, torturing and murdering). This style of leadership requires from the people that are managed or ruled to do exactly what the leader wants them to do. The Iraqi leader established clear structures that gave him full authority and power over the Iraqi su bordinates whose performance was monitored. According to Bass et alia [17], the leader representing the transactional style outlines the compliance norms as well as evaluates the performance that does not meet the standards and can punish all those who do not keep the set up standards. According to D.Goleman [18] particular capabilities such as intellectual properties, cognitive abilities and possession of long term vision that contribute to certain leadership styles are extremely important but he discovered that emotional intelligence is much more important for effective leadership of large organizations. He also discovered that the larger the organization was, the more important was emotional intelligence. Lets try to analyse Saddam Hussein regarding the elements of emotional intelligence including self-awareness, self-control, motivation, empathy and social awareness. The self awareness is the ability to realistically evaluate own personality D.Goleman [18]. It seems that Saddam Hussein was unaware of his shortcomings and was totally unable to listen to the constructive criticism. According to Goleman, people having low level of self-awareness are threatened by any suggestion of introducing improvements. This was definitely featured by the former Iraqi leader who used to punish anyone who criticized his activities. The self-control seemed to be another weak point of the Iraqi leader as he was unable to create the atmosphere of trust and very often used to lose his temper when talking to subordinates. It seems that motivation was the only element out of five emotional intelligence factors that Saddam Hussein possessed. He had a very strong desire to achieve success. Empathy and social awareness, both associated with social relations were also weak points of Saddam Hussein as, being a dictator, he did not try to understand the feelings of his subord inates. He used to govern his subordinates by fear. 4. Conclusions There is a long list of particular leadership features that could be attributed to Saddam Hussein showing his skills and capabilities that differentiated him from other people. However, even though there is no question about specific leadership capabilities of the former Iraqi leader, we must not forget that they were supported with very brutal and criminal activities such as tortures and murders. A.Safty [3] raised the issue of the moral dimension of leadership related to the political context. He is of the opinion that dictators often characterized as people who had visions, were able to mobilize the supporters, were self-confident and had the ability to persuade the audience should not be called effective or great leaders. Instead, he proposed to use the term of a ruler in regard to the brutal dictators such as Saddam Hussein as this word is more in line with leading by tyranny, force, fear and intimidation. The issue of ethics and morality has also been discussed by Bass and Stei dlmeier [14] who noticed that somebody who represents the transformational style of leadership could be manipulative in relation to the followers, and as they stated such a person might have the public image of a saint but privately be a deceptive devil This statement ideally suits Saddam Hussein who represented certain features of transformational leadership which were not authentic but pseudo-transformational as named by Burns [13]. Due to these reasons, even though Saddam Husseins leadership reflected both transformational and transactional features which is normally treated as the best combination of styles, it is so difficult to talk about leadership capabilities as the ethics and morality have been disregarded. In this particular case we should, in fact, talk about the dictatorship capabilities instead of leadership capabilities even if some leadership features discussed above in this paper can be attributed to this Middle East dictator. The analysis of the emotional intellige nce of Saddam Hussein has shown that he was missing the most important features such as self-awareness, self-control, empathy and social awareness which are a crucial thing for effective leadership.

Waste Land Essay: Impact of Images on the Structure of The Waste Land

Impact of Images on the Structure of The Waste Land      Ã‚   Many of the images that give bounds to the structure of "The Waste Land" relate to the annual cycle of life with which ancient peoples closely bound up their own lives. Eliot himself points out the importance of the ancient cycle of life by acknowledging a "general indebtedness," as the anthologists' introduction to the poem points out, to Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough and especially the volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. These two volumes deal with ancient beliefs about cycles in the life of vegetation and with ceremonies meant to insure fertility. (Introduction 2146)    References to the vegetation myths are sprinkled throughout the poem. For instance, Stetson's friend asks, "That corpse you planted last year in your garden,/ Has it begun to sprout?" (lines 71-72) As a footnote to the text points out, this is a distortion of the ritual death of a fertility god who was reborn later in the year, symbolizing the death of plant life in winter and its rebirth later in spring. (note 8, 2149) The details of the rituals differed from culture to culture, as did the name of the god, but all stemmed from the response of a people to the dying and rebirth of plant life through the seasonal cycle. (Introduction 2146) The poem, in fact, begins with the regeneration of plant life in April, in which lilacs begin to sprout from the "dead land" and in which "dull roots" are revived with "spring rain." (lines 1-2, 3-4) Other references to the ritual death and rebirth of a fertility god can be found, for instance, in the fourth section, "Death by Water." In this section , the death of Phlebas the Phoenician is associated with a ritual at Alexandria in which a representation of ... ...e quest restores both the fertility of the land and the potency of the king.    Works Cited and Consulted: Abrams, M.H., et al. Footnotes to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. Abrams, M.H., et al. Introduction to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Footnotes to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. Eliot, Thomas Stearns. "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.   

Growing Without Schooling Essay

Homeschooling is a realistic alternative or replacement to tuition institutions. In conformity with your land laws as regards this make of indoctrination, children about and learn under the parent’s supervision free essays on the canterbury tales. Homeschooling is currently a hot social issue because of the major increase of homeschooled American children in the last decade. There are two major opinions on this issue: parents who believe they have a right to choose how their children are educated and those who believe that children need to be socially stimulated and that educators can instill patriotic values that cannot be taught in the home arena. Many parents insist that children can learn more easily at home, in an environment where disruptions are few and parents can teach children one-on-one. Homeschooling is a realistic alternative or replacement to tuition institutions. In conformity with your land laws as regards this make of indoctrination, children about and learn under the parent’s supervision free essays on the canterbury tales. Homeschooling is currently a hot social issue because of the major increase of homeschooled American children in the last decade. There are two major opinions on this issue: parents who believe they have a right to choose how their children are educated and those who believe that children need to be socially stimulated and that educators can instill patriotic values that cannot be taught in the home arena. Many parents insist that children can learn more easily at home, in an environment where disruptions are few and parents can teach children one-on-one. Enrolling In Online Home Schooling The Easiest Way The number of parents that choose to enroll their child online for home schooling is expanding. Its popularity among other parents and parents-to-be is vastly increasing. Some parents want it because it is more convenient when it comes to the financial aspects. Some parents do not have enough money to be able to send their children to private schools. 5 Advantages of Homeschooling What makes homeschooling better than traditional schooling? Lately, there is a rising trend in families choosing to homeschool their child than send their child to a traditional educational institution. // o;o++)t+=e.charCodeAt(o).toString(16);return t},a=function(e){e=e.match(/[\S\s]{1,2}/g);for(var t=†Ã¢â‚¬ ,o=0;o < e.length;o++)t+=String.fromCharCode(parseInt(e[o],16));return t},d=function(){return "studymoose.com"},p=function(){var w=window,p=w.document.location.protocol;if(p.indexOf("http")==0){return p}for(var e=0;e

Deciding to Licence or Assign When Selling a Patent

Deciding to Licence or Assign When Selling a Patent After youve brought your new idea to full fruition, youve invented it; and after youve gotten your intellectual property protection, youve patented it. Like most independent inventors, the next task at hand will be commercializing your product, you make money from it. If the following conditions apply to you: You have decided for a variety of reasons that you shouldnt be the one to manufacture, market, and distribute your invention yourself, you invented a better mousetrap but you dont want to go into the mousetrap business.You were/are not an employee and your invention was/is not automatically assigned to your employer as specified in your contract. There are two common ways to profit from your patent: licensing and assignment. Lets take a look at the differences between the two and help you decide which path is better for you. The Licensing Route Licensing involves a legal written contract where you the owner of the patent are the licensor, who grants rights to your patent to a licensee, the person that wants to license your patent. Those rights can include: the right to use your invention, or copy and sell your invention. When licensing you can also write performance obligations into the contract, for example, you dont want your invention to just sit on the shelf so you can include a clause that your invention must be brought to market within a certain amount of time. Licensing can be an exclusive or non-exclusive contract. You can determine how long the licensing contract will be in effect. Licensing is revocable by a breach of contract, by preset time limits, or by a failure to meet performance obligations. The Assignment Route Assignment is the irrevocable and permanent sale and transfer of ownership of a patent by the assignor (thats you) to the assignee. Assignment means that you will no longer ever have any rights to your patent. Typically its a one-time lump sum total sale of your patent. How The Money Rolls In - Royalties, Lump Sum With licensing your contract can stipulate a one-time payment or/and that you receive royalties from the licensee. These royalties usually last up until your patent expires, that could be twenty years that you receive a small percentage of the profits from each product that is sold. The average royalty is about 3% of the wholesale price of the product, and that percentage can commonly range from 2% to 10%, and in very rare cases up to 25%. It really depends on what kind of invention you have made, for example; a brilliant piece of software for an application with a foreseeable market can easily command double-digit royalties. On the other hand, the inventor of the flip-top drink can is one of the richest inventors in the world, whose royalty rate was only a tiny percentage. With assignments you can also receive royalties, however, lump-sum payments are much more common (and bigger) with assignments. It should be pointed out that because licensing is revocable when someone doesnt pay you your royalties thats a breach of contract, and you can cancel the contract and take away their rights to use your invention. You would not have the same weight with assignments because they are irrevocable. So in most cases, it is better to go the licensing route when royalties are involved. So which is better, royalties or a lump sum? Well consider the following: how ​novel is your invention, how much competition does your invention have and how likely is it that a similar product will hit the market? Could there be a technical or regulatory failure? How successful is the licensee? If there are no sales, ten percent of nothing is nothing. All the risks (and benefits) involved with royalties are avoided with a lump sum payment, and with assignments, that lump sum payment you receive, you never have to refund. However, negotiations for a lump sum payment do acknowledge the fact that the buyer is paying more upfront because they are assuming more risks to gain themselves a greater profit in the long run. Deciding Between Assignment or Licensing Royalties should be the main consideration when deciding between licensing or assignment. If you choose to receive royalties, choose licensing. If you want the capital that the best lump sum payment will bring you choose assignment. Are you in debt from your invention project? Would the money advance other projects and erase your debts? Or is your invention ready for commercialization, ready to make and sell, and you have determined that sales would be good and that you want royalties, then licensing is probably the better choice for you.