Who Owns Patents?
from the interesting-questions dept
A court ruling in Japan today certainly brings out a lot of questions about patent ownership for debate. The Tokyo District Court today said that Nichia Corp. owns the rights to a patent on blue LEDs that were invented by Shuji Nakamura, who no longer works at the company. Nakamura is upset that Nichia is making a ton of money off of the patent while he basically got nothing. Even more to the point, Nichia told Nakamura to stop working on blue LED technology because they didn't believe it would lead anywhere, but Nakamura continued the research on his own. It certainly is a pretty standard agreement for most researchers that if they develop something while employed by a company, that patent belongs to the company. It's just part of the way things work these days when the corporate research department has trampled on the individual genius inventor system from the first half of the twentieth century. However, it does make you wonder if such deals act as disincentive for inventors to create new technologies - knowing that their companies (instead of they, themselves) will be the ones to profit.
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Tired Issue
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Re: Tired Issue
I have to agree that at least to some extent, when the company owns everything you do, there is definitely less incentive to invent. As far as that goes, one would think it would just make sense that company would reward people for brilliant ideas that make the company millions, and even make that part of your work contract or performance plan, but the fact is there is no reason for the company to do such a thing - so they won't spend money they don't have to. A major reason why small startups are where a large chunk of the innovation comes from.
steve snyder
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