Shark Tank Companies with Licensing Deals

You hear the word “licensing” in the Shark Tank quite a bit. This is a pretty good explanation:

Product licensing involves two parties: a licensor and a licensee. The licensor owns the rights to certain intellectual property (IP) while the licensee manufactures products using the IP granted by the licensor via a license agreement. A product (or merchandise) license allows licensees to leverage popular IP to create branded products, usually for a specific period of time.

Once the rights have been secured, the licensee manufactures product using the licensed IP, and in return pays the licensor a royalty for its use.

In other words, I take my invention and give it to a manufacturer who handles the whole process and I get a percentage of each sale. It’s a hands off way to earn from an invention. Even though you hear the word licensing a lot in the Tank, few companies end up with that type of arrangement. Certainly less than the 220 Shark Tank companies that are out of business or the 58 that were acquired. There are only 9 Shark Tank companies that got licensing deals, though some of the ones that went out of business may have had them prior to shutting down.

While updating the site in the summer of 2021, I compiled the following list.