Is it Time to Codify Principles for Ownership of Academic Employee Inventions? The Disconnect Between Policy and the Law PDF Download

Author: Ann Monotti
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Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Australian patent law contains no express code for ascertaining ownership of employee inventions, other than to vest rights by statute in the first instance in the inventor. The rights of an employer must derive from the inventor. In the private business sector, the usual way in which an employer will protect its rights to inventions that its employees are paid to create is with an express term in the employment contract. This will commonly involve some requirement to assign future inventions to the employer. In the past, where the owner of a business might have overlooked the need for an express claim, or where an express claim was found to be unenforceable, the courts have developed doctrines at common law and in equity to protect the entitlement of business owners to inventions that arose from work that the employee was paid to perform. At common law, a term was implied in law into employment contracts to the effect that the employer is entitled to the product of the work that the employee is paid to perform, even when the product is a patentable invention. The generality of the defined circumstances in which employees must assign inventions to their employer, such as 'in the course of employment' or 'in pursuance of the duties of employment' makes these rules very difficult to apply with certainty. The main difficulty has been to decide whether it was the employee's job to create the invention that is being fought over. The result is a lack of certainty in marginal cases that employment lawyers aim to minimise with carefully drafted contracts of employment. It is within this broad context of relative uncertainty as to entitlement to employee inventions created in business environments that the courts were asked to determine the rights of university employers to the inventions of their academic employees in Victoria University of Technology v Wilson, and University of Western Australia v Gray. Universities had embraced commercial activities since the 1990s, following government pressure for them to be part of the wider innovation agenda. This engagement with the inn ovation agenda was accompanied with an expectation for universities to own and manage employee inventions 'to maximise the national benefits and returns from public investment in research'. The Wilson and Gray cases show that this entry into the business of commercial exploitation of inventions has provided fertile ground for entitlement disputes with entrepreneurial academic inventors, despite institutional attempts to make express claims. However, it is important not to exaggerate the potential for problems in this area, because only a small quantity of academic employee inventions will be suitable for commercial exploitation through licensing or some other means, and most technology transfer activities will proceed without undue dispute as to appropriate terms. The bulk of university research is disseminated openly through the usual avenues of conference presentations, articles and books, staff transfers and teaching. Nevertheless, the Wilson and Gray cases remind us that valuable inventions are created, disputes do arise and that the legal principles developed in business contexts are not necessarily appropriate for the resolution of disputes in an academic environment. The cases warn that contractual assignments of future inventions in academic employment contracts are not always enforceable, that express conditions may not be construed as expected and that there is now precedent for universities to be treated as distinctive from other business enterprises. The result is not one that inspires confidence for effective management of university intellectual property resources and suggests that some review of policy and the law is due. The question of ownership of employee inventions generally was raised by the Industrial Property Advisory Committee in its review of the patent system in 1984. The committee recommended that no change be made to the ownership position that prevailed under common law, even though the UK government had codified the principles in its Patents Act 1977 (UK). However, the Gray decision has changed the common law position for academic employee inventions with the result that the default position is no longer consistent with policy in this area. The author argues that the 'disconnect' between law and policy provides a reason for government to review its policies and if necessary to develop and codify the principles in the Patents Act 1990 (Cth) to ensure consistency in approach and outcome.