Patents employee rights

From the ethical standpoint, a patentable invention or a trade secret is like a piece of real estate it can be sold once, but then the original owner has no right to sell it again. On the other hand, we might compare an inventor with spectacular skill with the owner of an apartment house who can rent out an apartment and collect rent each month. Similarly, the scientist with unique skills can rent out those skills as an employee of a single entity or as a consultant to several, but he should be sure that he is renting skills and not purloining trade secrets. 

XVIII. Upon termination, the employee shall be given custody of his central personnel file. Records remaining with the employer will consist simply of the name and address of the terminated employee and the period of service. Upon termination, an employee shall be delivered a document by the employer defining his residual rights in inventions, patents pending, and possible publications. 

Intellectual property rights are the most sensitive interface between a fine-chemical company and its customer. This is particularly the case if the latter is a pharmaceutical company. Most of the profits of the industry derive from drugs protected by patents. Any dissipation or misuse of IP, on either the product or the manufacturing process, can cause serious damage. The company, its board, executives, and employees may be held liable. It is, therefore, imperative that strict procedures for safeguarding the IP are put in place, such as the following ... 

In general, an invention made by an employee in the course of his normal duties belongs to his employer, but the inventor has the right to be named in any patent for the invention. 

Where invention ownership issues arise outside of the employer/employee venue, contracts between the parties involved will govern the arrangement much as the employment contract does in the employer/employee venue. In some instances, one of the parties will agree by contract to assign any future patent rights to the other party, often in exchange for a predetermined royalty rate on any products, possibly in... 

In 1983, an Executive Order extended the coverage of the Bayh-Dole Act to all government contractors. The Act also granted federal agencies the right to offer exclusive or coexclusive licenses to patents on inventions made by laboratory employees considered necessary for the commercialization of the invention. 

Most inventors are not independent private persons but employees of a company, institute, university, or the state. Inventions emerge from work for which they are paid or were the objective of their work. Thus, the resulting patent rights belong to the employer. (However, the inventor(s) must be named on a patent.) Many employment contracts for researchers contain specific provisions which transfer the rights to commercially exploit inventions to the employer. 

When neither a patent assignment danse in an employment contract or in a policy statement in an internal company document exists, employer ownership of patent rights can be implied for employees who are hired to invent, i.e., those hired either for a specific project or problem or for their expertise in a specific area. If the inventor is an officer or director of a corporation or other business entity, a special obligation to assign may exist as part of the officer s or director s fiduciary duty toward the entity. 

Very few formulas in the pyrotechnic field are strictly privately owned. Where commercial contractors develop new items for the Department of Defense and with government funds, only the nonmilitary applications create proprietary rights for the patent owners. Conversely, patents obtained by government employees can be used royalty-free for military purposes. The reader who wishes to find out about restrictions in the use of any of the given formulas will have no difficulties in ascertaining the status from the patents quoted in the references. 

Usually, a Trade Secret is used to protect some technique or operation that the company has developed to give itself a competitive advantage. Unlike, new technology, ideas, and techniques covered by Trade Secrets cannot be patented. OSHA recognizes that there is a potential conflict between the Workforce Involvement of the PSM standard and a company s right to protect its competitive advantages. OSHA insists that employees must have access to the information that they need to carry out their work safely. However, there are ways in which employers can protect their rights. 

On other occasions the society participated in the preparation of a law draft on patents as far as the rights of employees in relation to their patented... 

In 1926, United States-based E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. initiated research in the field of very large molecules and synthetic fibers. This early research, headed by W.H. Carothers, concentrated on polymer which became nylon, the first synthetic fiber. Soon after, in the years 1939 1, John Rex Whinfield and James Tennant Dickson, employees of the Calico Printer s Association of Manchester, patented "polyethylene terephthalate" (also called PET or PETE) in 1941. Polyethylene terephthalate is the basis of synthetic fibers such as polyester, dacron, and terylene. In 1946, du Pont purchased the right to produce this polyester fiber in the United States. The company conducted some further developmental work, and in 1951, began to market the fiber under the name Dacron. Dupont s polyester research led to a whole range of trade-marked products, such as Mylar (1952), which is an extraordinarily strong polyester (PET) film, and others. 

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