Legal area
Employee Inventions
A German specialty
During patent infringement proceedings it turns out that the patent does not even belong to the company filing suit but to an employee who had made the invention during his time there. How could this happen even though the company had registered the invention with the Patent Office and had obtained patent protection in time-consuming examination procedures?
In most legal systems, an invention that an employee makes in the company automatically, or at least according to the employment agreement, goes to the employer. However, this is not the case in Germany, where a complicated web of mutual rights and duties regulates the collaboration of employees and employers when obtaining patents and utility models.
