Posts Tagged: "correct inventorship"

The Federal Circuit heard the case on Univ. of Utah v. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung der Wissenschaften e.V. At issue is whether the district court abused its discretion in declining to award attorney fees to Max Planck. The case involved an inventorship dispute over the “Tuschl II patents,” for certain RNAi discoveries, and owned by Max Planck. March 2000, the Max Planck inventors published an article describing certain RNAi discoveries. A month later, Dr. Bass of the University of Utah published a review article discussing the Max Planck article and offering some hypotheses regarding RNAi. The Tuschl II patents were filed on subject matter that was influenced by testing Dr. Bass’ hypotheses. The University of Utah sued Max Planck, alleging that Dr. Bass is either a sole or joint inventor of the Tuschl II patents… The Court will not second-guess a district court’s finding that a case was not “exceptional” so long as the Court reasonably explained why the case does not stand out from other patent cases. A district court is not constrained to a specific or formulaic approach proposed in cases like Octane Fitness.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit reviewed whether there was substantial evidence supporting the district court’s finding that Nathan and Matheson should be added as co-inventors. In determining that the inventorship evidence below was sufficient, the Court reiterated that all inventors are required to be named even if their contribution is limited to a single aspect of a single claim, and that co-inventors need not have collaborated at the same time to be named.

Assignments are the mechanism to transfer title of a patent, just like deeds are used to transfer real estate… For due diligence, the owners of the patents should provide all of the assignments in a chain of title. The chain of title always starts with the inventor and will progress to the current owner. If there are any license agreements relating to the patents, each of the previous owners of the patents should provide copies of the agreements.

The Court expressly held that concrete and particularized reputational injury alone can give rise to Article III standing to correct inventorship under § 256. Recognition as an inventor of an important patent is as significant to an inventor’s career as is authoring a scientific paper. Further, pecuniary consequences may flow from being designated an inventor, particularly for professionals employed as inventors. Here, Dr. Shukh presented numerous questions of material fact concerning whether his omission from the contested patents caused him a reputational injury.