Licensing Royalty Rates, 2025 Edition

This valuable reference presents the "going" royalty rate for virtually any product, including over 1,500 products and services in ten lucrative categories—art, celebrity, character and entertainment, collegiate, corporate, designer, event, sports, nonprofit and music. The essential reference for both beginning and more experienced licensing professionals.

Knowing the "going" royalty rate for virtually any product is as simple as reaching for the newly published Licensing Royalty Rates, 2025 Edition.

Setting a royalty rate too high can scare away potential licensees, while accepting a lower rate can cost licensors hundreds of thousands of dollars. Licensing Royalty Rates, 2025 Edition provides all the information you need to calculate the right rate every time.

The data in Licensing Royalty Rates is compiled using information from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. After careful review by a blue-ribbon panel of expert licensing consultants uniquely qualified to know what the appropriate rate range is for specific properties in each licensing category, the information is organized into four time-saving sections that give researchers fast access to comprehensive statistical and analytical data:

• Updated royalty rate surveys with product categories listed alphabetically and by trademark class. Survey charts have been completely revamped to include a range of typical royalty rates for each product category, as well as the industry average royalty rate for each particular product.
• An updated listing of the top franchises from 2024. See Section 5.02[A].
• Updated Section 6 detailing the state of the licensing industry, with updated survey and statistical information on worldwide licensing revenues by property type and product category, as well as the latest information on the top properties and agents in the industry.
• A new subsection detailing the royalty ranges for patent pools.
• Updated listing of licensing agents and consultants actively working in the industry.
• New Appendix containing the latest reported court decisions with respect to royalty rates in all facets of the industry, including consumer products, computer technology, telecommunications, plant patents, biotechnology, video games, music, and reasonable royalty rates.

Written in conjunction with a field of advisors, this study represents the twenty-first in an annual series of royalty rate studies in the merchandising and trademark licensing area. While these changes are generally subtle, should you find yourself in the negotiation of a multi-year license agreement for a hot property, a half-point difference in royalty rates over a five-year period can mean millions of dollars in additional (or decreased) royalty income. Seemingly minor changes can have substantial consequences.