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09 April 2009 / Christopher De Mauny
Issue: 7364 / Categories: Features , Property , Employment
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Employee patents

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Just rewards & employee brilliance: getting the right fit. Christopher de Mauny reports

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The decision in Kelly v GE Healthcare [2009] All ER (D) 114 (Feb) should be of interest to anyone advising technology undertakings or the employees of such undertakings. Without delving into the detail of patent law, a new technical invention may be lead to entitlement to a patent. If the legal conditions for patentability are satisfied a patent confers on its owner the exclusive right to commercialise the subject matter of the patented invention for twenty years: it is a statutory monopoly for that product or process. Thus the decision may also be of interest to advisors of undertakings who are not technology undertakings as such but who conduct any kind of in-house product development that has a technical rather than aesthetic character.

Under the Patents Act 1977 (PA 1977) inventions made by employees in the course of their employment usually belong to their employer. Section 39(1) of PA 1977 provides that an employee's

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