While you are making the rounds of the stores looking at the similar products, this is an opportunity for you to do some other research that will get you ahead of the game when you are ready to market your invention. Take a small pad and a pen with you and write down the name and location of the manufacturers of similar merchandise. You will find this information on all products that are offered for sale. It will be on a sticker or a hangtag or stamped somewhere on the item. These are the companies that will be your marketing targets later if you plan to license your product for royalties.

Or, they will be your competition if you plan to build a business around your invention. Either way, it will be to your advantage to know as much as you can about these companies that manufacture products similar to your invention. If your invention is something that is not specifically a retail item, such as a medical invention that would be sold through specialty outlets, you will need to track down those specific outlets and catalogs (perhaps with the help of a medical professional) in order to search in that area. However, if you have developed such an invention, chances are excellent that you are already familiar with those specialized outlets.

If your invention is in a field that is a specialized area in which the products are not found in the usual retail outlets, you may need assistance from professionals in that industry during your research or development phase. Be sure to have each person who assists you to sign a non-disclosure document for your files.

Intuitively, the described long-term pattern contrasts with the much more cyclical behavior of credit spreads. Yet it should be noted that a large part of this deviation has to be attributed to changes in the databases of the rating agencies and the average quality of recent new issuance. When the database contains more investment grade companies, default rates naturally tend to be lower, and vice versa. Furthermore, historical data on default rates does not only reflect the broad credit cycle, but also changes in companies’ preferences towards bank debt and corporate issuance. When banks’ lending standards are particularly restrictive, especially companies with a lower credit quality may prefer to finance their business by issuing corporate bonds. For the high-yield market there is empirical evidence that the average maturity of outstanding debt is correlated with the probability of default. In other words, default probability changes over the life of a bond. While at the date of issuance the company has sufficient capital, there is often considerable uncertainty about the viability of the business model and future economic success. Together with the 1990/91 recession the enormous volume of junk bonds issuance that took place in the late 1980s is responsible for the peak in default rates in 1991. Consequently, default rate data provided by the rating agencies is not a very pure indicator of credit conditions through time.