We understand that many of the licenses are dated. However,
from our constant review of license agreements,
it appears that royalty rates do not change much over time.
Industry profit margins also move in a narrow band and influence royalty rates. However, rest assured that we are searching for license agreements every day.
Please recall that an SEC reporting company only has to release the license agreement if it has a material
impact on the business. For example, we do not see many GE licenses.
Most likely no license would be material to their business.
Some reporting companies can also request confidential treatment and redact the royalty payment information.
We do go after those redacted license agreements (after five years) on a regular basis using a FOIA request.
EXAMPLE:
FOIA Redacted version of the Source-
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1319197/000119312505088310/dex1030.htm
and
Unredacted version of the Source-
https://royaltysource.com/FOIASource/pdf/ocr_18-06126-E.pdf
Note also while we search daily for transactions, we sometimes come across older licenses
that were just reported to the public or perhaps they may have been reported earlier but we just found
them in our searching and include them in the database. In addition, for some licenses where we
originally did not have enough detail to include them in the database, we were subsequently able
to gather more information about the licensed property and then add them to the database.