Counsel from jurisdictions where payments to employee-inventors only arise from contracts or employee incentive programs are sometimes surprised when they first become involved with jurisdictions that have statutory payment schemes for employee-inventors. Intellectual property (IP) management policies not written and designed with these jurisdictions in mind can lead to issues that may come to light only when a problem arises or in diligence. Even if a company has a process in place for making inventor payments, they also, in some circumstances, need to provide locally required notice and information to the inventor. Attorneys outside these jurisdictions need to be aware of these rules when conducting IP diligence, and when they are involved in managing patent prosecution dockets where the priority case originates in jurisdictions that have these requirements. One example of such a notice requirement is in France.
French inventors have a longstanding entitlement to compensation for their inventions by their employer, which, by law, the inventions can belong either to their employer from inception or are mandated for assignment to their employer. The rules on this compensation and the related notification requirements between the employee and employer, however, have been evolving over recent years. In view of this evolution, a company that complies with the French inventor compensation requirements,...
In a 2017 piece in The New York Times, voting expert Ari Berman wrote, “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed tactics that prevented blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups from voting. But fo...