These risks revolve primarily around the question of who actually owns the copyright in works created by the company's employees, consultants or independent contractors. Under this doctrine, an employer is considered the author, and thus owns all copyrights in work created by its employees in the context of a traditional employer-employee relationship. A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The term of a new patent is generally 20 years from the date the application was filed in the United States. As with copyrights, ownership of patentable inventions by employees can be critical to a company.
Specific employment is employment for the express purpose of creating specified inventions.
Courts generally hold that a specific inventive employee is bound to assign his or her patents to the employer. Courts typically hold that the employer owns a general inventive employee's patent if the employee created the invention during working hours, the patent is within the employer's scope of business or the employee used the employer's tools or equipment. A non-inventive employment is one in which the employee is not hired for the purpose of inventing anything for the company. The shop right only gives the employer a non-exclusive license to use the invention. The employee is still the owner of the invention and can license it to the employer's competitors.