spinnaker said:
What is the name of your state? MN - While working for a company in various R&D and Marketing roles I came up with, disclosed and assisted in the development of several product ideas that are now on the market. However, patents covering these ideas have recently come out with only the name of the former Cheif Technical Officer as inventor, whom the ideas were disclosed to. To date the company has not moved to correct this issue. If this person (CTO) does not want to cooperate am I out of luck? Is there anything I can do?
Well, there are ways to correct inventorship, if you really are a legal inventor. However, there isn't really any easy way for you to do it on your own -- you really need to have the assignee -- your company -- either file for a certificate of correction under 35 U.S.C. 256 and 37 CFR 1.324, or reissue under 35 U.S.C. 251. If they don't want to do it just by your asking, then you need to decide how far you are willing to push things. Having the inventors incorrect on a patent is grounds for invalidating the patent -- so if the company ever wants to enforce the patents, you could make it known that you would be willing to
help out any party that was seeking to invalidate the patents. Maybe that would modivate them to correct inventorship. Of course, if you still rely on the company for a paycheck that might not be the greatest course of action...
So, go ahead and ask them to correct the inventorship, and see what happens. If they say no, then you'll have to decide what to do and how far you are willing to push. Also, you might want to try and determine whether under a legal standard you really are an inventor. An invention requires both "conception" and "reduction to practice." Typically, the inventors are those people who are involved in the "conception" of the invention, that initial idea. However, the idea has to be fairly well developed before "conception" really occurs. Having an idea to build a car, for example, is too vague, so is an idea to enter a particular market, or a general direction to take to investigate a solution to a problem. Conception requires some concrete ideas, not just vague ideas. So make sure you really qualify as an inventor before pushing too hard.
