Shop-Right

It is a term referring to a non-exclusive royalty-fee license given to a employer where an employee uses the employment s time and/or equipment to develop an invention. Shop-rights come into play when there is no assignment agreement. 

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For would-be enthusiasts in the northwest you ve pretty much got it made. The only worry would be to keep the plant from freezing (i.e., keep it inside ). You don t need anything except indirect sunlight. Indeed, live Salvia divinorum plants have been seen (by this author) for sale in a plant shop right off the Pike Place Market in Seattle. You just need to look around -- more people are growing it than you might think. 

To the general rule regarding ownership of inventions, there are two important qualifications. First, if the inventor creates his invention under circumstances such that another supplies material, money, or other aid, that person, party, or company may become entitled to a personal shop right to use the invention free of liability to the inventor. This shop right is not assignable as such to others, nor can it be licensed, but it can be transferred in a sale of the whole assets and business of the holder. Second, if the inventor makes the invention under circumstances such that he has sold his services in inventing to another party or person, that person or party may become the owner of the full title to invention. 

One of the easiest types of situations to resolve was the case where the employee was an ordinary employee engaged in carrying out general duties within the company, who made an invention in the course of his employment on company time and at company expense. The shop-right rule in such a case is well set out by the Supreme Court in United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp. (8) ... 

This is a simple definition of what is now known as shop right and is also a summary of the shop-right rule which had been applied by a large number of courts prior to this case. 

The court held on these facts that the inventors Dunmore and Lowell owned the inventions which they had made and that the only right the Government had was a shop right—that is, the free right to use the invention which Dunmore and Lowell had made. 

The court held that under these circumstances, the invention and the patent which he obtained for it were certainly the property of Small, and that the company was not even entitled to a shop right. The court found that the invention had been completed by the inventor before he had advised the company of its existence and that further work at company expense on it was only for the benefit of the company in developing it to a state where it could be put in commercial production. This was a close case, because there was a dissenting opinion by one of the three judges on the court who thought that the employer was entitled to a shop right on the basis that a considerable amount of money had been put into the development of the invention after the inventor had advised the company of it. It was in a very crude form at that time. 

Figure 2. Pre-conceptual design of a shop delivering 100 mol/s H2 (left) and of the factory of 10 shops (right).

This modifies the previous Acts in respect of closed shop rights of unions and also deals with rights to maternity pay and in the event of unfair dismissals. One of the main considerations of a tribunal in reaching its decision has been whether, in all the circumstances, the action the employer took was reasonable. Under the earlier Acts, the burden of proof was upon the employer to satisfy the tribunal of such reasonableness. However, under the 1980 Act, that burden of proof is removed and all the tribunal requires is to be satisfied that, in ail the circumstances, the employer did act reasonably... 

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