How to Invent and Protect Your Invention: A Guide to Patents for Scientists and Engineers

CHAPTER 9. WHO IS THE INVENTOR?

1. Who is the inventor as defined by Patent Law?

2. Kathy, who was recently laid off from work at McDonald’s, conceives a new valuable chemical and she reduces the invention to practice in her garage. Kathy's friend offers to give her $100,000 to develop the chemical and to start a jointly owned company. Will Kathy's friend be named a co-inventor on the patent that will issue?

3. How does inventorship for patents differ from authorship for publications?

4. Tahlia is a graduate student who synthesized a new and unobvious molecule for her Master's thesis. She and her professor proceed to prepare a manuscript for publication in a learned journal. Tahlia asks her sister Jenna, who is working in the laboratory of a leather manufacturing company, to proofread her draft. Jenna recognizes that this new compound could be an important additive to facilitate leather tanning. Jenna persuades her sister to file a patent application prior to publishing her manuscript. Is Jenna a co-inventor? Elaborate.

5. How many inventors can be listed on a patent application?

6. What is conception?

7. What is reduction to practice?

8. An inventor who has been tinkering in his garage comes up with a new imaging technology. He sketches out the components needed to build his imaging machine, including complex diagrams and scales for his drawings. He then hires a friend who works for a high tech manufacturing company to build a prototype. Who conceived the idea for the ...