This weekend the President of United Patent Research (UPR), Mr. Patrick Ralston, attended a major trade show on behalf of UPR clients. The Toy Fair 2017 was held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, New York from February 18–21, 2017. This premier toy product show featured booths from major toy manufactures from around the world.

One of the major successes of UPR’s attendance at this tradeshow was that three companies signed general non-disclosure agreements with UPR. A general non-disclosure agreement is a signed document in which a company promises not to utilize or disclose any invention information provided to it by UPR. This safeguards the intellectual property rights of UPR clients.

At the tradeshow Mr. Ralston made many meaningful contacts with representatives of several major companies. Mr. Ralston met twice with the Vice President of New Brand Development of Razor USA, a major toy company. This company representative said that he is looking forward to fostering a mutually advantageous relationship with UPR. He discussed having a meeting next week to narrow down which products the company may be interested in licensing.

Mr. Ralston also met with the Marketing Director at Cobra Toys. This company is currently in the process of completing the appropriate confidentiality agreements which are needed before UPR provides the company with detailed information about our clients’ inventions.

At the Tomy International booth Mr. Ralston met with the Design Manager. Currently Universal Licensing, the licensing affiliate of UPR, is reviewing the non-disclosure agreements submitted by Tomy International. Once the proper non-disclosure agreements are in place discussions and licensing negotiations can commence. While at the AmEurop booth Mr. Ralston met with the Product Development Manager and Managing Partner. Another promising meeting occurred with the representative from Zuru which has offices in 6 countries. Mr. Ralston is looking forward to starting presentations with the President and Product Manager of Zuru early next week.

Finally, two significant meetings were held with Gund and Toys R Us. The Gund representative said that Gund is looking forward to meeting with UPR to review toy products that are available for licensing. Regarding Toys R Us, Mr. Ralston held a private meeting with Associate Buyer Mike Melo in the American Express lounge during which Mr. Melo reviewed UPR products for possible licensing agreements. UPR follow up will occur in the next several weeks.

On the fun side, Mr. Ralston was able to meet superhero Batman at the show who “guarded” the show from any trouble. All together, the Toy Fair 2017 was a great success. As can be seen from the above partial presentation of UPR’s activities at the tradeshow, there is a lot of hard work and targeting of attention that is needed for a meaningful representation of new invention concepts. UPR will continue to work hard for our clients at the tradeshows we will be attending in the upcoming months.