By Ernest W. Grumbles III and J.R. Maddox I. Introduction
Behind every burst of technical innovation is a human inventor – someone
who claims to have discovered some new useful product or process. The frailties of human
patent drafters, sometimes the inventors themselves, are the subject of frequent debate in Markman
hearings. While patents may perish under scrutiny of the prior art, or be narrowed to the point of
inconsequence, what of the inventors themselves? Can problems with the inventors themselves
vitiate patent rights?
For example, what if an inventor perishes, loses mental capacity or goes missing
before filing for a patent? Are intangible property rights lost along with the body and mind of the
inventor? What about an inventor who refuses to sign a patent application? Or an inventor
who lays false or overstated claim to an invention to the detriment of the true inventor? This last
issue is especially troubling in that fraudulent inventorship can bar enforcement of a patent.
This article considers these various inventor problems, offers some practical
solutions to minimize their occurrence and previews some potential legislation that may eliminate a few
of the problems altogether.
II Problem Inventors
A. The Inventor Who Dies.
Imagine that TechnoCorp is in the final stages of development of a groundbreaking
new nano-tech ...
