Un article de la firme Morrison Foerster publié sur le site JDSupra et intitulé “Who Owns Your New Employee’s Patents?” présente les pièges qui peuvent survenir dans la rédaction de clauses de cession de droits de propriété intellectuelle entre un employeur et un de ses employés.
L’Article fait référence à un récent cas de la Federal Circuit Stanford University v. Roche.
Selon Morrison Foerster :
The Stanford case demonstrates how the wrong choice Court of contractual language can have important and costly consequences, Employment and Labor including the loss of valuable patent rights. …
The Federal Circuit’s decision in the Stanford case raises a number of issues relevant to agreements allocating patent rights generally. These issues include: (1) the importance of careful drafting of employment and other agreements governing the obligations of researchers and other employees to assign to their employers inventions arising during the course of an employment relationship; (2) the need to consider how to handle situations in which an employee might have conflicting obligations to his or her employer and another organization, whether in the context of a collaboration, a consultancy, or some other type of relationship; and (3) the importance of educating employees regarding what to look for when reviewing the wide variety of agreements executed during the routine course of business.