Rights of Joint Owners of a Patent

Authors

Dwight B. Cheever

Abstract

0wing to the fact that the courts have decided the question Squite at variance from the expectations of ordinary persons, there is, perhaps, no legal proposition in patent law more interesting or important than that of the rights of joint owners of a patent. The relationship may arise from the parties being joint inventors, by their being joint assignees from the inventor or previous owner, or by the most common method, of one being an assignee from the patentee of a fractional interest in a patent; frequently in consideration of paying the expense of procuring the patent. By authority of the statute, based upon the Constitution of the United States, patents are issued to inventors, conveying to them the exclusive right to make, use, and sell the invention for a period of seventeen years from the date of issue of the patent and the same authority gives to the inventor the right to assign the entire title, or a fractional interest therein, to another party or parties; and it also gives the inventor or his assignee the right, while retaining the title himself, to grant to others the right, either exclusively or nonexclusively, as desired, to make, use, and sell the device of the patent throughout the entire United States, or a specified portion of the same.

Recommended Citation

Dwight B. Cheever, Rights of Joint Owners of a Patent, 2 Mich. L. Rev. 446 (1904).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol2/iss6/2