Product Licensing Basics What does it take to transform your product from a mediocre seller to a megahit? The answer could be as simple as inking a licensing deal.

Without the name of a popular baseball team on it, Bob Diee's baseball cap-shaped computer mouse might have done little more than collect dust in the back of his garage. Fortunately for Diee and his partner, Glenn Luthy, they had a hunch that a computer mouse would sell much better if it had the name of a favorite sports team on it.

For Diee and Luthy, obtaining licenses from both the minor and major leagues, as well as from university baseball teams, has proved to be the key to their product's success--and they expect those licensing agreements to help them achieve $1.5 million in sales for 2007, only their second year selling the device.

So if you, too, would like to slice off a bit of this billion-dollar industry, we're here to help. And a good place to start is with a firm understanding of what licensing is in the first place.