Joint invention

Whether an invention is by a sole inventor or by a joint inventor, it is a mental product. It is either a sole or a joint mental product. Joint inventors are one legal animal, and a sole inventor is another legal animal. If chemist A is the applicant on one invention and chemists A and B are the applicants on another related invention, they are separate legal entities. To demonstrate dramatically how different, it has been held (7) that a joint invention of both A and B is a good anticipation to a later related invention of either A or B, and the fact that either A or B was a joint inventor of the reference does not discredit the reference in the slightest. 

Generally, joint invention must involve some sort of collaboration between two or more inventors which leads to the product. Let us consider a textbook definition first. A very old and very often cited authority (19) says ... 

Where two or more persons, acting jointly, conceive the same idea of means, they are. . . jointly entitled to the patent. The sphere of their joint labors and success is thus the mental part of the inventive act. That one conceives the idea and another reduces it to practice that one conceives the principal idea and the other an idea which is ancillary to and inseparable from it that one conceives one idea and the other a different idea, both of which are united in the concrete invention, neither of these are joint invention, nor do they give to the inventors the right to become joint patentees. Only where the same single, unitary idea of means is the product of two or more minds. . . is the conception truly joint.. . ... 

A similar case would be where chemist A conceived a structural formula for a new compound but had trouble making it by the conventional chemical processes which first occurred to those skilled in the art. Chemist B following some nonobvious process steps does make the compound. Again one would be no place without the other, and this is a proper joint invention. A court has considered an analogous type of situation (26) and said that when one can perceive the crude form of elements or possibility of adaption to accomplish a result, he becomes a joint inventor with the one who actually does accomplish it. 

This type of situation has been recognized as a joint invention because a court has said (24) that the mere fact that one of two joint inventors conceived the best thought that went into the invention does not invalidate the patent. Both thoughts make up a joint invention, even where a series of steps are present in a process or a number of elements in combination. 

Occasionally courts speak about a single-idea invention, and there is a presumption that with such single-idea inventions, joint inventorship is unlikely. An example would be a known biological method for producing an antibiotic. The antibiotic yield is increased by, say, merely raising the temperature. It would be difficult to argue that this is a joint invention. 

A disadvantage of joint invention which commonly arises is the failure of corroboration in a later interference. Many times joint inventors are the only ones who have observed the work which led to the invention, but these people cannot be used to corroborate the fact of invention to show priority because they are interested parties. 

Another feature of joint inventions relates to the claims in the application. All the claims should ideally cover inventions which are truly joint. If any claim is directed to a feature which was contributed by one inventor alone, such claim may be held invalid (12,22). 

David Schetter It puts enormous pressure on the other universities that are not doing these creative deals. The other part is that, whereas they can access only 30 percent of the licenses, they want to look at everything. And if there is any joint invention, what good is it Essentially they are going to capture over 60 or 70 percent of actual licensed information. 

The lip seal, or oil. seal, used on modern centrifugal pumps is borrowed from the automotive industry. The lip seal was born with the invention of the automobile transmission and the universal joint in the early days of the family ear. It would effectively retain the transmission fluid and U-joint grea.se on jalopies with rumble seats. It really hasn t changed much in design since the 1920s. 

Some of Edison s commercial inventions were produced solely to break the monopolies of patents already granted. Many others represented improvements or changes of known devices these included Edison s electric light and dynamo and his quadraplex tclcgi aph and impro V cd telephone transmitter. This does not detract from the importance of his work, because in the cases of the electric light and dynamo, in particular, his work led to commercially practical devices that were widely adopted. Although some inventions, such his motion picture apparatuses, were not the result of his work alone, hut the result of the joint efforts of the staff of the laboratoiy, Edison s contribution as leader in these projects cannot he ignored. 

HAL [Hot acid leaching] A process for purifying silica sand or zircon by leaching out surface iron compounds with hot sulfuric acid. Derived from an earlier process, invented in 1955 by British Industrial Sand, in which silica sand was treated with hot, gaseous hydrogen chloride. The process for cleaning zircon sand was developed jointly by Hepworth Minerals Chemicals, UK, and Metallurgical Services Pty, Australia, in 1991. 

Lanxide A process for making composites of metals with oxides. A molten metal reacts with an adjacent oxidant and is progressively drawn through its own oxidation product so as to yield a ceramic/metal composite. Fibres or other reinforcing materials can be placed in the path of the oxidation reaction and so incorporated in the final product. The Lanxide Corporation was founded in 1983 in Newark, DE, to exploit this invention. In 1990 it formed a joint venture with Du Pont to make electronic components by this process. Variations are Dimox (directed metal oxidation), for making ceramic metal composites, and Primex (pressureless infiltration by metal), for making metal matrix composites. 

MTG [Methanol to gasoline] A common abbreviation for any process achieving this conversion, notably the Mobil process. This uses as a catalyst the synthetic zeolite ZSM-5, invented at the Mobil Research Laboratory in 1972. The process was first disclosed in 1976 and commercialized in 1985 by New Zealand Synfuels, a joint venture of Mobil Corporation and Petrocorp. In 1990, this process was providing one third of New Zealand s gasoline requirements. 

Musro [Murphy ores, CSIRO] Also written Murso. A process for beneficiating ilmenite by a combination of oxidation, reduction, and pressure leaching with hydrochloric acid. Invented in Australia in 1967 and developed jointly by Murphyores Pty and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, but not commercialized then. Further developed in 1992 by Pivot Mining NL, Queensland. 

Ziegler-Natta Also called Z-N. A general name for the family of olefin polymerization processes invented by K. Ziegler and G. Natta in the 1950s. Ziegler and Natta were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1963 for their discoveries. See Natta, Ziegler (1). 

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