OWNERSHIP OF EMPLOYEE INVENTIONS

Ownership of employee inventions

Right: a scene from The Man in the White Suit, a classic movie tale of the fight to control an errant employee's invention

The IPKat has just received a copy of a research paper from the Intellectual Property Institute (IPI), London. It's Ownership of Employee Inventions and Remuneration: a Comparative Overview. Authored by the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute pairing of Rajesh Sagar and Aditya Nagarsheth, this paper reviews the employee invention provisions in Germany, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, India and China.

Left: today's manufacturers - tomorrow's innovators?

The IPKat is particularly pleased to see some serious discussion of the laws of developing countries. The German, Japanese and US positions have been visited so often in the past - but, seeing that the outsourcing of manufacturing processes carries with it an inevitable transfer of technology and know-how, there is a likelihood that the proportion of industrial innovation emanating from 'hands-on' manufacturing experience will rise. When it does, a three-way tussle between employee inventor, manufacturing employer and the business that commissions the manufacture may generate some interesting interplay.

This work is available directly from the IPI, which is a charitable organisation that needs lots of support if it is to carry on its good work.

Bibliographic details: ISBN 1 874001 90 1; paperback, 39pp (A4 size, so you get lots of text per page). Price £10 + postage and packaging. Rupture factor - non-existent; the book is light and will comply with even into the meanest airline hand-luggage restrictions.

Memo to the IPI: neither this book nor Trevor Cook's work on experimental use defences in patent law (to be reviewed shortly) are listed under Publications on the IPI's website. For some unknown reason they are mentioned under the menu for 'Newsletter'. Please rectify!