Patent Ownership in Employee Inventions: Drafting Assignment Clauses That Survive Audit and Litigation

Introduction : While the value of a patent is in its utility, it cannot have any value if there is no certainty of ownership. Corporate patent portfolios are overwhelmingly based on employee-invented inventions, and so are the disputes that arise years later, which are not about the merit of the invention but about who owns it. While there is a vesting rule for copyright in several jurisdictions that works created in the course of employment vest in the employer, there is no such automatic...