But the penny dropped in 1981 when Tony convinced a significant European manufacturer to license Cash Engineering technology while he was attending a trade fair in Hannover, Germany. By 1985, the company was making its 'living' from licensing its intellectual property. According to Tony, the progression was a natural one, but making a living from IP is both wonderful and awful. The licensor fears they won't be able to off-load their technology. The licensee fears that if they don't buy the technology their competitor will buy it - and blow them out of the water.
Every innovator is enormously optimistic, eccentric and a bit mad, but they are also paranoid.
I use to worry that everyone was about to steal my technology until I went about trying to sell it. Then I couldn't give it away,' says Tony. Of course, Cash Engineering technology is tremendously valuable. In fact, two foreign take-overs have occurred out of the mistaken belief that the subsumed companies were the originators of the air compression technology, when in fact, it had been licensed from Cash. Though license agreements can be lucrative, many Australian businesses view the expense of intellectual property protection, such as patents, registered designs and trade marks, as unjustified.