The right to a patent shall belong to the inventor, and it may be transferred by an inter vivos transaction or by succession. The owner can be a natural person or a legal entity, and a patent can be owned by two or more persons if they have made an invention jointly.
At a first glance, determining who is the owner of a Patent is easy. However, there is a series of situation that may be a little bit more complex, such as concurring inventions, employment relationships and state-funded research. Decision No. 486 has addressed those topics as follows:
- Concurring inventions: this phenomena is also known as multiple discovery, and it refers to an object of protection that has been invented simultaneously and independently by two or more inventors.
Under the Andean Community Regime, if two or more persons have made the same invention independently of each other, the patent shall be granted to the person, or to the successor in title, who files the first application in respect of it or claims the earliest priority.
- Employment relationships:
If the invention occurs in the course of employment relations, the employer, whatever its form and nature, may transfer part of the economic benefits deriving from the inventions to the employee inventor with the view to promoting research activity, without prejudice to the provisions of the national legislation of each member country.
- Inventions and State funds:
The entities that receive State funding for their research shall reinvest part of the royalties received from the marketing of inventions, with the view to accumulating a continuous supply of such funds and stimulating researchers by giving them a share in the proceeds from innovations, in accordance with the legislation of each member country.
Towards the inventor’s paternity right… The inventor shall have the right to be mentioned as such in the patent, and may likewise object to being so mentioned.
