모인출원의 법률관계

A Putative Inventor’s Remedies Pre-and Post-Issuance of a Patent

An application for patent shall be made or authorized to be made by the inventor, which can be either a sole inventor or multiple co-inventors. Failure to do so results in the abandonment of the patent application. During the course of prosecuting the application (that is, arguing why the application should be issued), claims may be amended in such a way that named inventors must be changed. A means for a putative inventor to assert inventorship after issuance is to begin an invalidation proceeding with regard to the original patent. Generally, courts have required a party seeking to invalidate a patent on incorrect inventorship grounds to bear a heavy burden of proof. Courts are hesitant to invalidate a patent for incorrect inventorship because it is a highly technical defens that destroys an otherwise valid patent. The putative inventor must file a patent application for the disputed invention with the correct inventorship.