Source: https://jipel.law.nyu.edu/vol-2-no-1-1-simmons/
Timestamp: 2018-05-22 00:19:53
Document Index: 529006120

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 201', '§ 22', '§ 152', '§ 261', '§ 22', '§ 111', '§ 115', '§ 118', '§ 101', '§ 131', '§ 102', '§ 204', '§ 408', '§ 409', '§ 411', '§ 412', '§ 106', '§ 201', '§ 203', '§ 304', '§ 203', '§ 302', '§ 261', '§ 22', '§ 22', '§ 22', '§ 22', '§ 5', '§ 62', '§1', '§ 62']

Inventions Made for Hire
November 26, 2012 By Joshua L. Simmons in JIPEL Vol. 2 - No. 1 Tags: Patent
In order to understand the nature of inventive activity during the nineteenth century, one must understand that fundamental shifts were occurring in society at the time that changed both who the inventors were and what they were inventing. The United States has always been a country of inventors. In fact, both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are credited with numerous inventions, including plows, adjustable writing desks and swivel chairs.[90] However, at the end of eighteenth century, there were “probably no more than 300 people who we would now class as scientists in the entire world,”[91] By 1800, there were about a thousand, and by 1900 there were approximately 100,000.[92] Due to the growth in the number of scientists, science began to shift from “a gentlemanly hobby, where the interests and abilities of a single individual [could] have a profound impact, to a well-populated profession, where progress depend[ed] on the work of many individuals who [were], to some extent, interchangeable.”[93] Similarly, the number of non-scientist inventors blossomed throughout the nineteenth century leading to an increased ability to appreciate the “interplay between science and technology, particularly in the fields of electricity and engine building,” which “led to a host of new practical machines that changed communications, transportation, the home, the workplace, and the farm,”[94] For example, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, America remained a nation of farmers who used the same hand implements that had been used for centuries to harvest their crops and who would travel primarily by horse or boat.[95] In the time before the Civil War, however, non-scientist inventors made many advances, including the invention of the steamboat, farming machinery, the telegraph, and synthetic materials.[96] Such advances were only possible due to the increased interplay between science and technology that continued to grow throughout the nineteenth century.[97] These developments also led to societal changes, including increased prosperity and the end of slavery as new equipment was developed that could perform the work better and more cheaply.[98] Despite the democratization of science and invention in the nineteenth century, however, inventive activity continued to be considered the work of individuals. In fact, there are “no reported cases before 1843 in which an employer claimed, as against an employee, ownership of a patent because the inventor had been working for him at the time of the invention,”[99] Thus, in the nineteenth century, the general perception was that inventorship was the work of certain individuals, who were considered the great men of the time. One visual example of this mentality is Christian Schussele’s 1857 painting titled Men of Progress, which depicts Benjamin Franklin overlooking nineteen nineteenth century inventors:[100]
Figure 2: Men of Progress
Despite this public perception, however, the reality was that even these great men had assistance in creating their famous inventions. Among those depicted in Schussele’s painting is Charles Goodyear, who is remembered for his invention of vulcanized rubber in 1839.[101] He received a patent on his process in 1844,[102] and almost immediately became embroiled in patent litigation.[103] Not only was Goodyear forced to litigate against his competitors, however, but also against his own employees, one of whom attempted to patent one of Goodyear’s inventions.[104] Fortunately for Goodyear, despite recognizing a presumption in favor of the employee—who actually made the machine—the courts considered Goodyear’s employee’s activities to have been at Goodyear’s direction, and thus, they determined that it was Goodyear, and not his employee, that was the true inventor.[105] Despite the favorable result for Goodyear, the case only underscored the presumption that employees owned their inventions, as the court continued to articulate employee-ownership as the general presumption in such cases. Thus, time and time again, courts were required to find exceptions in order to protect employers from the presumption’s consequences. For example, in 1843 the Supreme Court, in McClurg v. Kingsland, determined that a license or grant from the employee to the employer may be presumed by virtue of the fact that the employee:
For inventors in the twentieth century, more and more inventive activity would occur within corporate settings. However, patentable inventive activity would continue to be credited to individuals, not groups, until late into the century. In fact, the average number of inventors per patent would not begin to change dramatically until the 1970s, when a “dramatic increase in the proportion of ‘highly collaborative’ inventions” would drive the average up:[153]
Yet, despite the fact that today the “ordinary inventor is . . . a joint inventor who invents as part of a team,”[154] patent law continues to require that corporate employers receive assignments from their employees in order to effect a transfer of the ownership of the employees’ patent rights. In Part II, several reasons behind copyright law’s move toward the work made for hire doctrine were posited: (1) courts were attempting to reflect the intent of the parties; (2) courts felt that employees were in the best position to determine ex ante whether they intended to assert copyright ownership; (3) changing notions of the nature of authorship; (4) ease of statutory drafting; (5) avoiding constitutional concerns; and (6) concern about renewal terms. Three of these reasons simply do not apply to patent law. First, patents in the United States do not have renewal terms. Second, the copyright statute was being revised in 1909 for reasons beyond the codification of the work made for hire doctrine. The patent statute, by contrast, was not significantly revised until 1952. Without an independent push to redraft the Patent Act, the need to ease statutory drafting was absent, and constitutional concerns in granting patent rights to non-“inventors” would not need to be addressed. As for the remaining reasons for the shift in copyright law, patent law simply did not share those factors. First, the perceived nature of inventive activity in the nineteenth century did not lend itself to an argument for the need of a doctrine like work made for hire. As discussed in Part II, copyrighted works grew in complexity over the course of the nineteenth century. While copyrighted works were originally only embodied in single author books, they steadily grew to include complicated works involving the input of the multiple creative individuals. In particular, the creation of maps and theatrical works required coordination among multiple parties to insure that works could be exploited. Once the 1909 Act was passed, that complication grew exponentially as additional works were brought under the copyright statute. The perception of inventive activity in the nineteenth century, on the other hand, did not appear to require significant coordination among parties. Rather, credit for advances was given to individual inventors, whether or not they, like Edison, employed others in their invention workshops. Moreover, even in the nineteenth century, most patents were on incremental improvements of existing technologies, which made it even more likely that the number of individuals involved in each inventive push forward would be small. Further, even if an invention required multiple individuals to reduce it to practice, the individual credited with the invention could subsume any other inventive activity into his invention under the employee improvements doctrine. In fact, in 1916, three-quarters of U.S. patents were issued to individuals.[155] Thu­­s, the need to coordinate among multiple individuals that existed in copyright law in the nineteenth century did not exist in patent law.[156] Second, the existing doctrines that had developed, including the hired-to-invent doctrine, provided sufficient ex ante protection to employers. The shop rights doctrine, which was well established in the early part of the century, provided employers with a way of ensuring that their expectations were met. Unlike today where many organizations that own patent rights merely license those rights to others to use, in the nineteenth century, most companies used patent rights merely to exclude competitors while they themselves developed products to sell to consumers. Without the need to license, companies merely needed the right to use, which the shop rights doctrine provided. Moreover, as described above, when an inventor did use assistance in the process of developing his invention, the employee improvements doctrine protected him from needing to secure rights from each assistant in his workshop. As long as the inventor couldn’t be seen as deriving his invention from someone else, he could be fairly content that his rights in the invention would be secure. Finally, by the end of the nineteenth century, employers were securing contracts with their employees that included provisions requiring the assignment of any patented inventions later developed.[157] In 1885, only 12% of U.S. patents were issued to corporations.[158] By 1950, it had grown to 75%, and by the 1980s, 84% of U.S. patents were assigned to corporations, “usually the employer of the actual inventor,”[159] In the past decade, those efforts have become increasingly successful.[160]
In fact, it will come as no surprise that the Intellectual Property Owners Association’s list of top patent owners does not include the name of a single individual.[161] Further, by the turn of the century, when an employer hired an inventor, the hired-to-invent doctrine would require the inventor to assign their rights to the employer. Despite the protection of the existing patent law doctrines that give employers some of the benefits of the work made for hire doctrine, it is clear from Table 5 that not one doctrine captures all of the benefits from that doctrine:[162]
[1] See infra Part IV.
[2] See Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 201(b) (2006) (“In the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author for purposes of this title, and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright.”).
[3] See United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp., 289 U.S. 178, 188 (1933) (noting that invention is “the product of original thought”); Solomons v. United States, 137 U.S. 342, 346 (1890) (“[W]hatever invention [an inventor] may thus conceive and perfect is his individual property.”); Gayler v. Wilder, 51 U.S. 477, 493 (1851) (“[T]he discoverer of a new and useful improvement is vested by law with an inchoate right to its exclusive use, which he may perfect and make absolute by proceeding in the manner which the law requires.”); 8 Chisum on Patents § 22.01 (2012) (“The presumptive owner of the property right in a patentable invention is the single human inventor . . . .”); see also Patent Act of 1952, 35 U.S.C. § 152 (2006) (“Patents may be granted to the assignee of the inventor of record in the Patent and Trademark Office, upon the application made and the specification sworn to by the inventor, except as otherwise provided in this title.”); id. § 261 (“Applications for patent, patents, or any interest therein, shall be assignable in law by an instrument in writing.”); Bd. of Trustees Trs. of Leland Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular Sys., Inc., 131 S. Ct. 2188, 2192 (2011) (“Since 1790, the patent law has operated on the premise that rights in an invention belong to the inventor.”); Dubilier Condenser, 289 U.S. at 187 (“A patent is property and title to it can pass only by assignment.”); 8 Chisum on Patents § 22.01 (2012) (“The inventor . . . [may] transfer ownership interests by written assignment to anyone . . . .”). In fact, only the actual inventor is entitled to a patent, and only the inventor or someone he has assigned his patent rights to in writing may file a patent application, which in either case must be made on the inventor’s behalf. See 35 U.S.C. § 111(a)(2)(C) (“Such application shall include . . . an oath by the applicant as prescribed by section 115 of this title.”); id. § 115 (“The applicant shall make oath that he believes himself to be the original and first inventor of the process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or improvement thereof, for which he solicits a patent . . . .”) (emphasis added); id. § 118 (“Whenever an inventor refuses to execute an application for patent, or cannot be found or reached after diligent effort, a person to whom the inventor has assigned or agreed in writing to assign the invention or who otherwise shows sufficient proprietary interest in the matter justifying such action, may make application for patent on behalf of and as agent for the inventor . . . and the Director may grant a patent to such inventor . . . .”) (emphasis added).
[4] Dubilier Condenser, 289 U.S. at 189; see also Stanford, 131 S. Ct. at 2196 (“We have rejected the idea that mere employment is sufficient to vest title to an employee’s invention in the employer.”).
[6] As described below, in the nineteenth century, copyright law had a strong presumption of employee ownership, which slowly moved to an employer presumption that was finally codified in the twentieth century. See infra Part II. Patent law, on the other hand, developed various doctrines that permitted employers to be considered the owners of patent rights in certain circumstances, but not in others. See infra Part III.
[7] See infra Part IV.
[11] See Stanford, 131 S. Ct. 2188 (2011) (holding that Stanford did not hold the rights to a patent that was allegedly infringed by Roche’s HIV test kits); Abbott Point of Care Inc. v. Epocal Inc., 666 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (affirming the dismissal of Abbott complaint for lack of standing to bring suit based on blood sample testing patents).
[17] Id. § 101 (“A ‘work made for hire’ is—
[19] Id. at 751–52 (“In determining whether a hired party is an employee under the general common law of agency, we consider [1] the hiring party’s right to control the manner and means by which the product is accomplished. Among the other factors relevant to this inquiry are [2] the skill required; [3] the source of the instrumentalities and tools; [4] the location of the work; [5] the duration of the relationship between the parties; [6] whether the hiring party has the right to assign additional projects to the hired party; [7] the extent of the hired party’s discretion over when and how long to work; [8] the method of payment; [9] the hired party’s role in hiring and paying assistants; [10] whether the work is part of the regular business of the hiring party; [11] whether the hiring party is in business; [12] the provision of employee benefits; [13] and the tax treatment of the hired party.”) (citations omitted).
[20] Id. at 752 (citing Ward v. Atl. Coast Line R.R., 362 US 396, 400 (1960); Hilton Int’l Co. v. NLRB, 690 F.2d 318, 321 (2d Cir. 1982)).
[22] Id. (“These factors will almost always be relevant and should be given more weight in the analysis, because they will usually be highly probative of the true nature of the employment relationship.”).
[24] See Patent Act of 1952, 35 U.S.C. § 131 (2006).
[25] See Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (2006).
[26] See id. § 204(a).
[29] See 17 U.S.C. § 408(a) (2006) (“[T]he owner of copyright or of any exclusive right in the work may obtain registration of the copyright claim . . . .”); id. at § 409 (“The application for copyright registration . . . shall include — (1) the name and address of the copyright claimant . . . (4) in the case of a work made for hire, a statement to this effect . . . .”).
[30] See id. § 411(a).
[31] See id. § 412.
[32] See id. § 106.
[33] See id. § 201(d).
[36] See 17 U.S.C. § 203(a) (stating that exclusive or nonexclusive transfers or licenses of copyrights to works created on or after January 1, 1978 and not works made for hire may be terminated); id. § 304(c) (noting that exclusive or nonexclusive transfers or licenses of the renewal copyrights to works within its first or renewal term on January 1, 1978 and not works made for hire may be terminated).
[37] Id. § 203; see Simmons, supra note 17, at 274–75 (describing cases of termination involving comic book talent); cf. James Grimmelmann, The Worst Part of Copyright: Termination of Transfers, The Laboratorium (Feb. 15, 2012, 10:23 AM), http://laboratorium.net/archive/2012/ 02/15/the_worst_part_of_copyright_termination_of_transfe (arguing that the inalienability created by the termination transfer provisions of the Copyright Act is unsupported by moral intuitions or logic).
[39] Id. § 302(c).
[44] See id. § 261 (“Applications for patent, patents, or any interest therein, shall be assignable in law by an instrument in writing. The applicant, patentee, or his assigns or legal representatives may in like manner grant and convey an exclusive right under his application for patent, or patents, to the whole or any specified part of the United States.”).
[47] See McDaniel, supra note 46, at 36.
[48] Lariscey, 949 F. 2d at 1144 (“The shop right has variously been described as a form of implied license, founded on estoppel or acquiescence.”).
[49] See McClurg, 42 U.S. 202; see also Chisum, supra note 3, at § 22.03[3][a] (“The actions of both the employee and the employer may warrant the assumption that the employee had consented to allow limited use of his invention in return for assistance in the development of the idea.”).
[50] See Gill v. United States, 160 U.S. 426 (1896); see also Chisum, supra note 3, at § 22.03[3][a] (“By participating in the installation of an embodiment of the invention in the employer’s business without demanding a royalty or other compensation, the employee is estopped from later demanding compensation or charging infringement after issuance of the patent.”).
[51] See Dubilier Condenser, 289 U.S. at 188; Beecroft & Blackman, Inc. v. Rooney, 268 F. 545 (S.D.N.Y. 1920); see also Chisum, supra note 3, at § 22.03[3][a] (“Because the employee has used employer resources to develop the invention, it is only fair and equitable that the employer have a limited right to use the invention. The party who invests in a project and risks the cost of failure should enjoy a return on his/her investment and should share in the benefits of success.”).
[52] See Dubilier Condenser, 289 U.S. at 188 (“[W]here a servant, during his hours of employment, working with his master’s materials and appliances, conceives and perfects an invention for which he obtains a patent, he must accord his master a non-exclusive right to practice the invention.”); Kurtzon, 228 F. Supp. at 697 (“[The employer] has the right to use the plaintiff’s invention but pays no royalties to the patentee. It has no property or title interest in the invention or the patent. [It] has no exclusive contract with the [employee] that others shall not practice the invention. At most [it] has a ‘shop right’ or license to use, manufacture and sell the [product] which is not an exclusive contract and amounts to a bare license protecting [the employer] from a claim of infringement by [the employee]. . . . Such a licensee may neither sue alone nor join with the licensor patentee in an infringement action.”) (citations omitted).
[53] See Lane & Bodley Co. v. Locke, 150 U.S. 193 (1893) (holding that the Hapgood doctrine would not be extended to a company that “was organized upon the same basis as the [predecessor company]; that the business of the company was to be the same as that carried on by [the predecessor], and to be carried on in the same premises; that the entire property and assets of the firm and its liabilities and obligations were devolved upon the [successor] company”); Hapgood v. Hewitt, 119 U.S. 226 (1886) (holding that although after the original corporation entitled to a shop right dissolved, the stockholders had created a new corporation—its successor in interest—the shop right did not cover the new corporation).
[54] See Standard Parts Co. v. Peck, 264 U.S. 52 (1924) (holding that the invention’s creator held the legal title to the patented invention in trust for his former employer, and ordering him to assign the title in the patent to him employer’s successor); see also Houghton v. United States, 23 F.2d 386 (4th Cir. 1928) (“An employ[ee], performing all the duties assigned to him in his department of service, may exercise his inventive faculties in any direction he chooses, with the assurance that whatever invention he may thus conceive and perfect is his individual property. . . . But this general rule is subject to these limitations. If one is employed to devise or perfect an instrument, or a means for accomplishing a prescribed result, he cannot, after successfully accomplishing the work for which he was employed, plead title thereto as against his employer. That which he has been employed and paid to accomplish becomes, when accomplished, the property of his employer. Whatever rights as an individual he may have had in and to his inventive powers, and that which they are able to accomplish, he has sold in advance to his employer.” (citing Solomons v. United States, 137 U.S. 342, 346 (1890)); Nat’l Dev. Co. v. Gray, 55 N.E.2d 783, 787 (Mass. 1944) (“If the employee fails to reach his goal the loss falls upon the employer, but if he succeeds in accomplishing the prescribed result then the invention belongs to the employer even though the terms of employment contain no express provision dealing with the ownership of whatever inventions may be developed.”).
[55] Chisum, supra note 3, at § 22.03[2] (“The primary factor . . . is the specificity of the task assigned to the employee. . . . Evidentiary factors that carry some weight include (1) previous assignments of patents on other inventions by the employee; (2) a customary practice within the company for other similarly situated employees to assign; (3) whether the invention was conceived during the period of employment; (4) who originally posed the problem solved by the invention; (5) the employee’s authority within the company to determine to whom to give a problem for solution; (6) the relative importance of the idea to the employer’s business; (7) a previous inconsistent position on inventorship by the employer; (8) an agreement by the employer to pay royalties to the employee; (9) payment of patent procurement expenses by the employer or employee; and (10) the absence of initial interest by the employer when the employee first exposed the idea.”).
[56] See Standard Parts, 264 U.S. at 56–57 (Upholding the district court’s formal decree that the patentee, “within ten days from the date of the decree, assign and transfer to the company the legal title to the letters patent, and also transfer to it all other patents or pending applications for patents for inventions made by him, in connection with the processes and machinery developed in the performance of the agreement with the [company],” Furthermore, “if [the patentee] failed to perform the decree, ‘then and in that event’ the ‘decree [would] have the same force and effect as such assignments and transfers would have had if made.’”).
[57] Id. But see Leon Jaroff, Intellectual Chain Gang, Time Vol. 149, 64 (Feb. 10, 1997), available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,985892,00.html (describing employee that chose to go to jail rather than to comply with a court order to assign his invention to his employer).
[58] See 1-5 Milgrim on Trade Secrets § 5.02[4][b] (“The general rule of law is that inventions made by an employee, although made during the hours of employment and with the use of his employer’s materials, facilities and personnel, are the employee’s property unless by the terms of his employment, or otherwise, he agreed to transfer the ownership (as distinguished from the use) of such inventions.”); see also United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp., 289 U.S. 178, 187 (1933) (stating that inventions created by employees not hired to invent—even if the invention is within the same field as their employment—follow the general rule that title may only pass through negotiated assignments).
[59] Agawam Co. v. Jordan, 74 U.S. 583, 602 (1868) (“No one is entitled to a patent for that which he did not invent unless he can show a legal title to the same from the inventor or by operation of law; but where a person has discovered an improved principle in a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, and employs other persons to assist him in carrying out that principle, and they, in the course of experiments arising from that employment, make valuable discoveries ancillary to the plan and preconceived design of the employer, such suggested improvements are in general to be regarded as the property of the party who discovered the original improved principle, and may be embodied in his patent as a part of his invention.”).
[60] Id. at 602 (“[W]here a person has discovered an improved principle in a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, and employs other persons to assist him in carrying out that principle, and they, in the course of experiments arising from that employment, make valuable discoveries ancillary to the plan and preconceived design of the employer, such suggested improvements are in general to be regarded as the property of the party who discovered the original improved principle, and may be embodied in his patent as a part of his invention.”).
[61] Id.; see also Int’l Carrier Call & Television Corp. v. Radio Corp. of Am., 142 F.2d 493, 496 (2d Cir. 1944) (“An employer who seeks to patent the fruits of his employees’ labors must go further than merely to express a purpose to be realized.”).
[62] Agawam, 74 U.S. at 603 (“Persons employed, as much as employers, are entitled to their own independent inventions, but where the employer has conceived the plan of an invention and is engaged in experiments to perfect it, no suggestions from an employee, not amounting to a new method or arrangement, which, in itself is a complete invention, is sufficient to deprive the employer of the exclusive property in the perfected improvement.”); Larson v. Crowther, 26 F.2d 780, 790 (8th Cir. 1928) (“Where a party has discovered an improved principle in a manufacture, and employs another to assist him in carrying out that principle, and the employee makes valuable additions to the preconceived design of the employer, such improvements are, in general, to be regarded as the property of the employer, and may be embodied in his patent as part of his invention,” (citations omitted)).
[63] See Copyright Act of 1909, ch. 320, § 62, 35 Stat. 1075 (amended 1976) (“[T]he word “author” shall include an employer in the case of works made for hire.”).
[64] Catherine L. Fisk, Authors At Work: The Origins of the Work-For-Hire Doctrine, 15 Yale J.L. & Hum. 1, 5 (2003).
[65] Id. at 7 (“[S]ome courts did focus on the employer’s contribution or the employer’s right to control. But over time many came to rely simply on the legal fiction that employment renders the employer the author. The ‘crude legal fiction’ was not that the employer’s right to control made it the author; it was that the employer was the author.”).
[66] But see id. at 15 (discussing that despite courts’ statements to the contrary, studies have shown that “between forty-four and forty-nine percent of copyright registration between 1790 and 1800 were by a person other than the actual author.”) (citation omitted).
[67] Copyright Act of 1790, ch. 15 §1, 1 Stat. 124 (amended 1976). The first thing you notice in this group of works is that while books can certainly be created by an individual author, the most useful maps require coordinated effort by multiple individuals.
[68] See Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. 591 (1834) (holding that the author of twelve volumes reporting the cases of the United States Supreme Court held copyright in his original elements added to the reports, although not the work of the justices themselves).
[69] See Fisk, supra note 64, at 16–18 (discussing early American legal publishing and the status of legal reporters, who were hired by the courts as independent contractors—although not called that—and encouraged to find publishers for their work by selling their copyrights). Fisk believes that the fact that early cases involved case reporters who, like Wheaton vis-à-vis the United States Supreme Court, had relationships with the judges likely deciding these cases, likely influenced their outcome. See id. at 21. The reporters were not traditional employees, but rather important and well-educated men who had agreed to perform a function that that was essential to the profession. See id.
[70] See Pierpont v. Fowle, 19 F. Cas. 652 (C.C.D. Mass. 1846) (holding that the renewal rights in a copyrighted work are not included in an assignment of the initial copyrights).
[71] See Atwill v. Ferrett, 2 F. Cas. 195 (1846) (holding that an author commissioned to create an opera remained the author of the work, but that an involved theater manager retained copyright in the version performed in his theater).
[72] See Pennsylvania v. Desilver, 3 Phila. 31 (C.P. 1858) (holding that the state employing a coordinating cartographer held the copyrights in his work); Heine v. Appleton, 11 F. Cas. 1031 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1857) (holding that an artist that had participated in a government funded expedition could not enjoin publication of books containing his illustrations, because he had expressly agreed otherwise and he had been paid to alter the images for that very purpose).
[73] See Fisk, supra note 64, at 32 (“[C]ourts came to understand that a corporation—the quintessential “corporate” (as in collective) author—should own the rights to the work created by all the persons who worked for the corporation.”); see also infra Part II.C.
[74] See Lawrence v. Dana, 15 F. Cas. 26 (C.C.D. Mass. 1869) (holding that an employer’s use of an employee’s work on a legal treatise, which she had contracted not to make use of in future editions, is an infringement). In Lawrence, the court in dicta noted that the employee had not acquired “any right to demand a copyright” in his work, but rather his employer held that right. Id. at 51.
[75] In both Roberts v. Myers and Boucicault v. Fox, the author of a commissioned play sued the theater manager who commissioned the piece for having it performed after the author, who was also acting in the piece, had quit. Roberts v. Myers, 20 F. Cas. 898 (C.C.D. Mass. 1860) (finding the author was entitled to the copyright in the work, despite being commissioned to write the play); Boucicault v. Fox, 3 F. Cas. 977 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1862) (finding that only an express agreement to assign copyright in the work would be sufficient to transfer copyright ownership). In Keene v. Wheatley, the proprietor of a New York theater had been given the rights to perform Our American Cousin, and in the process, she and her company adapted the play. 14 F. Cas. 180 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1861).
Figure 1: Our American Cousin Playbill
[76] Keene, 14 F. Cas. at 187.
[77] Id. Although the court ultimately held that the employee’s work was not copyrightable, the court did determine that equitable principles permitted the plaintiff to recover based on the employee’s giving his work to the defendants to add to their production. Id. at 188.
[78] Professor Fisk makes much of the fact that the doctrine “slipped into the cases without the usual adversary process,” because in both Keene and Lawrence, the employees did not lose the rights to their work. Fisk, supra note 64, at 43–44. In Keene, the employee had already assigned whatever he had to the theater producer defendants; if anyone was going to lose out it would have been them. Keene v. Wheatley, 14 F. Cas. 180 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1861). In Lawrence, despite the court acknowledging a copyright interest in the employer, the parties’ express contract protected the employee. Lawrence v. Dana, 15 F. Cas. 26 (C.C.D. Mass. 1869).
[79] See Callaghan v. Myers, 128 U.S. 617 (1888); Sarony v. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co., 17 F. 591 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1883); In re Gould & Co., 2 A. 886 (Conn. 1885).
[80] Callaghan, 128 U.S. at 647.
[81] Fisk, supra note 64, at 45 (emphasis added).
[82] Id. at 50 (citing Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss, Collaborative Research: Conflicts on Authorship, Ownership, and Accountability, 53 Vand. L. Rev. 1161, 1172–79 (2000)). But see Press Publishing Co. v. Monroe, 73 F. 196 (2d Cir. 1896) (holding that a contract provided copyright to the author); Mallory v. Mackaye, 86 F. 122 (C.C.N.Y. 1898) (holding that a contract allocated copyright in a theater manager over the playwright); Carte v. Evans, 27 F. 861 (C.C.D. Mass. 1886).
[83] Schumacher v. Schwencke, 25 F. 466 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1885). But see Edward Thompson Co. v. Am. Law Book Co., 119 F. 217, 219 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1902) (“It is conceded that the question whether a corporation can be an author within the meaning of the copyright laws has never been decided.”).
[84] In Aalmuhammed v. Lee, the plaintiff was hired to work on, without a written agreement, and made “very extensive” contributions to the film Malcolm X. 202 F.3d 1227, 1229 (9th Cir. 2000). However, the Ninth Circuit held that in the same way that the person who controlled the film’s hue was not a joint author of the film, the plaintiff would not be considered one either. Id. at 1233. Instead, the “superintended” or “master mind” of the whole work—in this case Spike Lee, who had signed a work for hire agreement—would be considered the work’s author. Id. at 1233, 1235. To have held otherwise would have opened authors to claims by “research assistants, editors, and former spouses, lovers and friends,” not to mention dramaturgies, actors, cinematographers, film editors, art directors, and costume, makeup, set and sound designers. See id. at 1235–36.
[85] 94 F. 152, 153 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1899).
[86] Id. at 153 (“[U]nder his contract . . . the literary product of [the employee’s] work became the property of the [employer], which it was entitled to copyright, and which, when copyrighted, [the employee] would have no more right than any stranger to copy or reproduce.”). The court denied the motion because it was unclear whether the newly created pamphlets infringed because both sets of pamphlets were compilations. Id.
[87] See Edward Thompson, 119 F. at 219 (In response to the defendant’s demurrer that the plaintiff corporation was not the copyright holder, the court stated, “It sufficiently appears that complainant’s publication is the result of the intellectual labor of the editors and compilers employed by complainant. It is unnecessary, as it might be impracticable, to set forth the names of the persons engaged in the preparation of the work.”);
[88] Copyright Act of 1909, ch. 320, § 62, 35 Stat. 1075 (amended 1976).
[89] Fisk, supra note 64, at 62 (“First, it was a matter of ease in statutory drafting (“author” is a term of art used throughout the statute). Second, it avoided constitutional doubts about a default rule of employer ownership stemming from the constitutional provision that Congress may give “authors” a copyright. Third, and most importantly, the drafters of the revision wanted to be sure that the employer would be the initial copyright owner rather than an assignee, because only the initial owner is entitled to obtain a renewal.”) (citations omitted).
[90] Jon Noonan, Nineteenth-Century Inventors, at ix (Facts on File 1992).
[91] John Gribbin, The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors 359–61 (Random House 2002) (citing Frank Greenaway, John Dalton and the Atom (Heinermann, London, 1966)).
[92] Id. “But remember that the whole population of Europe doubled, from about 100 million to about 200 million, between 1750 and 1850, and the population of Britain alone doubled between 1800 and 1850, from roughly 9 million to roughly 18 million. The number of scientists did increase as a proportion of the population, but not as dramatically as the figures for scientists alone suggested at first sight,” Id.
[93] Id. at 359.
[94] Rodney P. Carlisle, Inventions and Discoveries, Scientific American 224 (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2004).
[95] Noonan, supra note 90, at xi.
[96] Id. (“In 1830, there were only 23 miles of usable track in the United States, but that was soon to change. By 1850, there were 5,000 miles of track and 20 years later, 75,000 miles. Steamboats increased in size and number; new farming equipment filled the country with food; the telegraph lines grew alongside the expanding railroads; and a thousand uses were found for vulcanized rubber and other new materials.”).
[97] Carlisle, supra note 94, at 223 (“The machines were built first; then the principles that governed them were thought through. With the newly discovered principles in place, it was possible to build better machines.”).
[98] Noonan, supra note 90, at x–xi.
[99] Catherine L. Fisk, Removing the ‘Fuel of Interest’ from the ‘Fire of Genius’: Law and the Employee-Inventor, 1830–1930, 65 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1127, 1138 (1998); see also id. 1138 n.33 (explaining that it is “implausible that there were no such cases before 1843,” but there were fewer opinions written and reported at that time).
[100] Depicted left to right: William Morton; James Bogardus; Samuel Colt; Cyrus Hall McCormick; Joseph Saxton; Charles Goodyear; Peter Cooper; Jordan Mott; Joseph Henry; Eliphalet Nott; John Ericsson; Frederick Sickels; Samuel F. B. Morse; Henry Burden; Richard Hoe; Erastus Bigelow; Isaiah Jennings; Thomas Blanchard; Elias Howe.
[101] Noonan, supra note 90, at 33–34, 39 (“A sample of his rubber, composed of his most recent chemical formula, came in contact with a hot stove. The natural gum always softened in summer heat. With the extreme heat of the stove, the gum should have melted. Instead of softening, however, Goodyear’s newest rubber charred like leather. It could still stretch but it wasn’t soft or sticky! Goodyear noticed that the edge of his sample was perfectly cured and not charred. If he could find the correct temperature, he could make fully cured rubber.”).
[102] Id. at 36.
[103] Id. (“Several companies honored licenses from Goodyear to make rubber products using his methods. Some did not. These other companies copied Goodyear’s process without paying royalty fees. Goodyear had to get involved in lawsuits to protect his rights.”).
[104] In Warner v. Goodyear, Charles Goodyear patented an invention and then Solomon C. Warner, who had been employed as a machinist for Goodyear, attempted to patent the same invention. 29 F. Cas. 256, 256 (C.C.D.C. 1846). The invention at issue was a combination for “manufacturing corrugated or shirred India-rubber goods” using “metallic calendar rollers an elastic endless apron and a stretching-frame,” Id.
[105] The patent commissioner refused Warner’s patent, and when he appealed, the court found that although an inference could be drawn for Warner because he made the machine, it was rebutted by his employment and that while still employed he “stood by and saw Mr. Goodyear apply for and obtain a patent for it without objection,” Id. at 257. Moreover, the court found a presumption in Goodyear’s favor:
from the fact that Warner made the machine for Goodyear at his request, for his benefit, and at his expense, [the presumption] is that it was made according to his directions; and the burden of proof is then on Warner to show that the machine was not according to his directions.
Id. The court went on to find that Goodyear had conducted a number of experiments and that Warner had merely reduced to practice Goodyear’s combination. Id. Furthermore, the court may have been swayed by some evidence of bad faith, as Wilson did not apply for a patent for 18 months, six months after Goodyear had obtained his patent, and had reached an agreement with another company to pay for the costs in getting the patent. Id. Cf. Collier Eng’r Co. v. United Correspondence Sch., 94 F. 152 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1899), discussed supra notes 85–86 and accompanying text.
[106] 42 U.S. 202, 205 (1843). Furthermore, the employee continued to work at the foundry making rollers, and although his employer declined his proposal to apply for a patent and have the employer purchase his rights,
he made no demand on theme for any compensation for using his improvement, nor gave them any notice not to use it, till, on some misunderstanding on another subject, he gave them such notice, about the time of his leaving their foundry, and after making the agreement with the plaintiffs, who owned [another] foundry . . . for an assignment to them of his right.
[107] Id. at 204. The patent had been granted on an “improvement in the mode of casting chilled rollers and other metallic cylinders and cones . . . [so that] iron rollers or cylinders could be so cast that when the metal was introduced into the mould it should cause a sw[i]rl or rotary motion, by which the flog or dross would be thrown into the centre instead of the surface of the cylinder,” Id. The improvement was to change the direction of a tube exiting a furnace and entering the cylindrical mold from a perpendicular position to an angular one. Id. at 204–05 (“The tube or tubes, or passages called gates, through which the metal to be conveyed into the moulds shall not enter the mould perpendicularly at the bottom, but slanting, or in a direction approaching to a tangent of the cylinder, or if the gates enter the moulds horizontally or nearly so, shall not enter in the direction of the axis of the cylinder, but in a tangent form, or inclining towards a tangent of the cylinder.”).
[108] Id. at 206.
[109] Interestingly, McClurg has reasserted itself in modern copyright law to establish the idea that legislative expansion of intellectual property rights does not conflict with the constitution’s requirement that copyrights and patents be only for “limited times,” See Golan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873, 886–87 (2012). (“This Court again upheld Congress’ restoration of an invention to protected status in McClurg v. Kingsland . . . . There we enforced an 1839 amendment that recognized a patent on an invention despite its prior use by the inventor’s employer. Absent such dispensation, the employer’s use would have rendered the invention unpatentable, and therefore open to exploitation without the inventor’s leave.”) (citations omitted); Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 187–88 (2003); Golan v. Ashcroft, 310 F. Supp. 2d 1215, 1219 (D. Colo. 2004) (“As explained in Eldred, the McClurg court determined that [the employee] was ‘unprotected under the law in force when the patent issued because he had allowed his [ex-]employer briefly to practice the invention before he obtained the patent. Only upon enactment, two years later, of an exemption for such allowances did the patent become valid, retroactive to the time it issued.’ The McClurg Court upheld retroactive application of the new amended laws ‘for though they may be retrospective in their operation, that is not a sound objection to their validity.’”) (citations omitted).
[110] Cf. Fuller & Johnson Mfg. Co. v. Bartlett, 31 N.W. 747, 752 (Wis. 1887) (“The mere fact that, in making the invention, an employe [sic] uses the materials of his employer, and is aided by the services and suggestions of his co-employes [sic] and employer in perfecting and bringing the same into successful use, is insufficient to preclude him from all right thereto as an inventor.”).
[111] Noonan, supra note 90, at 26.
[112] In 1841, James Joule produced papers on the relationship between electricity and head for the Philosophical Magazine and the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Gribbin, supra note 91, at 384. Between 1839 and 1845, Darwin made significant advances in developing his theory of evolution. Id. at 349. In 1848 and 1849 respectively, Julius Robert von Mayer developed ideas about heat and energy into a discussion of the age of the Earth and the Sun, and William Thomson coined the term thermodynamics. Id. at 381, 383.
[113] First, Geissler invented a better kind of vacuum tube that used mercury to make airtight contact. Id. at 487. Then, he pushed the invention further and “sealed two electrodes into the evacuated glass vessel, creating a tube in which there was a permanent vacuum,” Id. at 488.
[114] Noonan, supra note 90, at 14–15, 26. In 1851, over 50 telegraph companies “started stretching wires,” and within 15 years, “almost half a million miles of lines in America, Europe, and Asia would be connected,” Id. at 23–24.
[115] Abraham Lincoln, Sole Hope of the Future (Feb. 11, 1859), in Mario M. Cuomo & Harold Holzer, Lincoln on Democracy 148, 150 (Fordham Univ. Press 2004).
[116] Gribbin, supra note 91, at 224.
[117] For example, in Wellman v. Blood, an employer attempted to patent an invention, and an interference party argued that he was not the inventor, but rather the inventor was a man who had created a drawing of the invention with a modification of his own. 29 F. Cas. 628, 629–31 (C.C.D.C. 1856) (involving improved machinery for “cleaning top cards of carding machines”). The court determined, however, that
[i]f the employer conceives the result embraced in the invention, or the general idea of a machine upon a particular principle, and in order to carry his conception into effect, it is necessary to employ manual dexterity, or even inventive skill, in the mechanical details and arrangements requisite for carrying out the original conception; in such cases the employer will be the inventor, and the servant will be a mere instrument through which he realizes his idea.
Id. at 631. It went on to decide that Wellman had conceived of the improvement first and “practically reduced it,” even though the final invention included the employee’s small modification. Id.
[118] King v. Gedney, 14 F. Cas. 526, 530 (C.C.D.C 1856) (involving improvement on washing machinery that included a four-way valve at the breach end of the tub). In King, the employer sought a patent on an improvement to a previously patented machine, his employee also sought a patent, and an interference was declared. Id. at 526. The patent commissioner decided invention priority in favor of the employee, and the employer appealed. Id. at 527.
[119] Id. at 530–31; see also Dental Vulcanite Co. v. Wetherbee, 7 F. Cas. 498, 502–03 (C.C.D. Mass. 1866); Goodyear v. Day, 10 F. Cas. 677, 677 (C.C.D.N.J. 1852); Sparkman v. Higgins, 22 F. Cas. 879, 880 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1846); Alden v. Dewey, 1 F. Cas. 329, 330 (C.C.D. Mass. 1840); Dixon v. Moyer, 7 F. Cas. 758, 759 (C.C.D. Pa. 1821). The court also repeated the rule stated in Wellman, supra note 117, but attributed it to Curtis on Patents. King, 14 F. Cas. at 530.
[120] Dwight B. Cheever, The Rights of Employer and Employee to Inventions Made by Either During the Relationship, 1 Mich. L. Rev. 384, 385 (1902–1903) (“[T]here is . . . no question for the courts where the employer does all the inventing and the employee does only work requiring ‘mechanical skill,” As soon, however, as the employee begins to think that his ‘mechanical skill’ has turned to inventive skill the trouble begins . . . .”).
[121] Noonan, supra note 90, at 48–49.
[122] Gribbin, supra note 91, at 382, 376–77. Moreover, in 1864, James Maxwell published his “tour de force paper, ‘A Dynamic Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,’ which summed up everything that it is possible to say about classical electricity and magnetism in a set of four equations, now known as Maxwell’s equations,” Id. at 431. These equations would be the basis for Albert Einstein’s work on the special theory of relativity. Id. at 435.
[123] Noonan, supra note 90, at 57–58, 65; see also Improvements in Rotary Steam-Engines, U.S. Patent No. 50,759 (issued Oct. 31, 1865) (see Figure 3). Railroad frogs are “used for keeping cars on the correct rails at intersections and track switches,” Noonan, supra note 90, at 57. Westinghouse’s invention was to use reversible cast steel frogs to prevent them from wearing out. Id.
Figure 3: U.S. Patent No. 50,759
[124] Carlisle, supra note 94, at 224; see also Improvement in Electrographic Vote-Recorder, U.S. Patent No. 90,646 (issued Jun. 1, 1869) (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: U.S. Patent No. 90,646
[125] Carlisle, supra note 94, at 224. Cf. Fisk, supra note 99, at 1139 (“In the late nineteenth century, research laboratories dedicated to invention and technological innovation—like Thomas Edison’s famed laboratory enclave at Menlo Park, New Jersey—were unusual”).
[126] 74 U.S. 583, 586 (1868). The invention in Agawam was a new mechanical combination for manufacturing wool and other fibrous materials using a carding machine that was fed a continuous roll. Id. at 584–86, 599–602.
[127] Id. at 587.
[129] Id. at 588, 593. Interestingly, Goulding actually failed to apply for a renewal of his patent right due to “erroneous information given him by the Commissioner of Patents,” and the patent expired. Id. at 588, 594. Twenty-one years after the patent expired, Goulding persuaded Congress to pass a special act, authorizing the patents commissioner to entertain an application for extension, and the patent reissued. Id. at 588, 594; see also An Act for the Relief of John Goulding, ch. 88, 12 Stat. 904 (1862). In a previous case involving Goulding’s patent, the constitutionality of the grant was questioned, but the circuit court rejected the argument. Jordan v. Donson, 13 F. Cas. 1092, 1095–96 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1870).
[130] Agawam, 74 U.S. at 589, 595.
[131] Agawam, 74 U.S. at 605–07. In so holding, the Court repeated over and over that while only the inventor is entitled to a patent, if he employed other persons to help and they made “valuable discoveries ancillary” to the employer’s plan, the employer who invented the original idea is regarded as the owner of them. Id. at 602–03. Rather, the employee’s contribution would need to meet the derivation requirements to preempt the employer’s rights from vesting. Id. (citing various derivation cases, including Pitts v. Hall, 19 F. Cas. 754 (C.C.N.D.N.Y. 1851); Reed v. Cutter, 20 F. Cas. 435 (C.C.D. Mass. 1841); Alden v. Dewey, 1 F. Cas. 329 (C.C.D. Mass. 1840)).
[132] Agawam, 74 U.S. at 603 (“Persons employed . . . are entitled to their own independent inventions.”).
[133] See supra notes 75–79 and accompanying text.
[134] Carlisle, supra note 94, at 225.
[135] Id. at 226–27.
[136] See supra note 125 and accompanying text.
[137] Noonan, supra note 90, at 74. By 1872, “Edison had filed patents for 52 inventions, most of them on printing-telegraph improvements. In the next three years, Edison created inventions such as the electric pen and mimeograph for making copies of letters and the quadruplex telegraph. The quadruplex handled two messages simultaneously to and from each end of the telegraph line, making a total of four messages on a single wire,” Id.
[138] Fisk, supra note 99, at 1141 (citing B. Zorina Khan & Kenneth L. Sokoloff, “Schemes of Practical Utility”: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Among “Great Inventors” in the United States, 1790–1865, 53 J. Econ. Hist. 289, 295–301 (1993) and Naomi R. Lamoreaux & Kenneth L. Sokoloff, Inventors, Firms, and the Market for Technology in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century United States, in Naomi R. Lamoreaux, et al., Learning by Doing in Firms, Markets, and Nations (University of Chicago Press 1999)).
[139] See United States v. Burns, 79 U.S. 246, 252 (1871) (hinting at the hired-to-invent doctrine in dicta).
[140] 90 U.S. 530, 536, 564 (1874). Andrew Evans had previously received a patent for an improvement in the creation of shirt collars, which turned out to be a flop. Id. The shirt collars were “made of parchment-paper and coated with varnish of bleached shellac,” which—according to the reporter—evidently did not look like linen, much less starched linen, became discolored over time, emitted an odor when wearers sweated, and was not amenable to the new fashion of turned down collars. Id. at 537. So Evans employed Crane & Co. to create “something which while it was paper and could be produced cheaply should yet have such a thickness, tenacity, pliability united with strength, and have moreover that polish of surface, and that exact bluish tint which is found in the best starched linen—as distinguished from yellowness and from dead white—which would deceive even critical observers who had no opportunity of judging otherwise than by eye,” Id. Crane & Co. after laborious effort were able to create just such a collar, and after it was created, Evans assigned his patent rights to the Union Paper Collar Company and they applied for and received a reissue of the patent. Id. at 537, 539. Collar Co. then brought suit against Van Dusen.
[141] Id. at 550, 564 (“[P]ersons employed, as much as employers, are entitled to their own independent inventions, and if the suggestions communicated constitute the whole substance of the improvement the rule is otherwise, and the patent, if granted to the employer, is invalid, because the real invention or discovery belongs to the person who made the suggestions.”). The court first noted that Evans likely knew nothing about the process of manufacturing paper and that the original patent did not describe the process added in the reissue. Id. at 561. It then found that Evans “did not communicate any information to [Crane & Co.] respecting the process by which such paper could be produced, nor did he give [them] any directions upon the subject,” because without knowledge of making paper he was unable to do so. Id. at 562.
[142] See Whiting v. Graves, 3 Ban. & A. 222 (C.C.D. Mass. 1878). In Whiting, an employer hired a machinist to maintain the machines in his new dry goods factors and to make any other machinery that would be necessary, but did not include a provision in his service contract related to patents. Id. at 223. Instead, the employer would have the machinist assign his inventions prior to application for patents on them, which worked fine for the employer’s dry goods machines, but then the machinist made an improvement on sewing-machines. Id. The court determined that while the employer would be afforded a shop right in the machinist’s inventions by virtue of his original contract, an additional assignment would be required for the employer to take legal title. Id. at 224. The court went on to hold, based on various testimony, that the employer was only entitled to a one-half interest in the patents, by virtue of an agreement to pay the patent expenses for one-half of the profits from the manufacture of the invention, and that the machinist was entitled to assign his interests to the defendants, which meant they could not infringe. Id. at 1061; see also Niagara Radiator Co. v. Meyers, 40 N.Y.S. 572, 573–76 (N.Y.S. Ct. 1896) (finding machine shop foreman not hired to invent); Connelly Mfg. Co v. Wattles, 23 A. 123, 124 (1891) (finding a shop foreman would not be hired to invent).
[143] Carlisle, supra note 94, at 226.
[145] Noonan, supra note 90, at 60 (“By the 1880s, Westinghouse was involved in several enterprises. As well as companies and patents he originated on his own, he also started purchasing the companies and patents of others, too. He seemed to find opportunities everywhere.”).
[146] See Clark v. Fernoline Chem. Co., 5 N.Y.S. 190, 191 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1889) (In a case primarily concerned with a dispute over unpaid wages, the New York Superior Court held that although an employee had been hired as a chemical expert and chemist, his employer was only entitled to a shop right and not an assignment of any patents granted to the employee.); see also Gill v. United States, 160 U.S. 426 (1896) (holding that the patentee had acquiesced to the government’s use of his invention—a shop right); McAleer v. United States, 150 U.S. 424, 432 (1893) (finding an expressed contract permitting government use); Lane & Brodley Co. v. Locke, 150 U.S. 193, 196, 198–99 (1893) (finding implied license—or shop right—from inventor to partnership, which was incorporated while he was still working there); Solomons v. United States, 137 U.S. 342, 346–48 (1890) (finding an implied license permitting government use—a shop right). In Dalzell v. Dueber Watch Case Manufacturing Co., an individual, who had been employed at various times within a company as an electroplater, slider and toolmaker, invented various things and applied for and was granted patents on them. 149 U.S. 315, 315–19 (1893) (the inventions involved improvement in the making of watch case cores). The employee sued the employer fro infringement, and the employer responded by seeking specific performance of an oral agreement to assign the right to obtain patents on them. Id. at 317–20. The Court held that an oral agreement for the “assignment of the right to obtain a patent for an invention” was neither within the statute of frauds nor covered by the requirements that all patent assignments be in writing. Id. at 320. However, the Court determined that the testimony was in hopeless conflict and therefore refused to afford specific performance; thus, allowing the infringement action to proceed. Id. at 326. The Court did, however, leave open the possibility that a shop right had been granted. Id. (“It is proper to add that the question whether the [employer], by virtue of the relations and transactions between it and [the employee], had the right, as by an implied license, to use [the employee’s] patents in its establishment is not presented by either of these records, but may be raised in the further proceedings upon the bill against the [employer] for an infringement.”).
[147] See Eclipse Mfg. Co. v. Adkins, 44 F. 280, 281–82 (C.C.N.D. Ill. 1890) (determining that employer who came up with the idea of putting ornamenting on radiator pipes, but had his employees create the design and build the pipes, was entitled to his patent, as the patent was on the idea, not the specific ornamentation); Streat v. White, 35 F. 426, 426, 428 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1888) (involving a design patent for textiles intended to be employed to create imitation “seersucker” fabrics, the court determined that because the plaintiff only had the idea of imitation seersucker, which did not constitute a novel idea, and employed a cotton goods factory manager to produce it by whatever means were necessary, he could not patent the resulting design). In Streat, the factory manager and the designer “were furnished a sample of a seersucker, and with a photographic copy of the sample, and where told to imitate it, and that the way in which the imitation was to be effected was left with the designer, who was solely responsible for a successful result, and to whom the task of finding an idea or conception of the method of imitating the crinkle was solely committed,” Id. at 428; see also Streat v. Simpson, 53 F. 358, 359 (C.C.S.D.N.Y. 1893) (finding in a subsequent infringement suit that the plaintiff “had nothing to do about designing or engraving the tools for printing the imitation, but through [the factory manager]; and that the designer and engraver were controlled by anything but the sample and photograph given to them by [the factory manager] is not made to appear”).
[148] Compare Dalzell, 149 U.S. at 320 (“[A] manufacturing corporation which has employed a skilled workman, for a state compensation, to take charge of its works, and to devote his time and services to devising and making improvements in articles there manufactured, is not entitled to a conveyance of patents obtained for inventions made by him while so employed, in the absence of express agreement to that effect.”) with Solomons, 137 U.S. at 346 (1890) (stating in dicta that “[i]f one is employed to devise or perfect an instrument, or a means for accomplishing a prescribed result, he cannot, after successfully accomplishing the work for which he was employed, plead title thereto as against his employer. That which he has been employed and paid to accomplish becomes, when accomplished, the property of his employer. Whatever rights as an individual he may have had in and to his inventive powers, and that which they are able to accomplish, he has sold in advance to his employer.”); Annin v. Wren, 44 Hun. 352, 353 (N. Y. Sup. Ct. 2d Dept. 1887) (holding that equity required a skilled draughtsman—hired by an iron truck and wheelbarrow manufacturer to develop his business—to assign his patents on improvements to the manufacturer’s wheelbarrows and trucks to the manufacturer if they were based on their joint development, because it would be unreasonable to prevent an employer from using improvements made during the course of the draughtsman’s employment). The court’s decision in Annin may have been colored by the fact that the draughtsman assigned his patent application to his brother in order to deprive the manufacturer of it. Id. at 354.
[149] See Standard Parts Co. v. Peck, 264 U.S. 52, 58–60 (1924).
[150] See Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law 446–59 (Simon & Schuster 1973) (discussing the right of the corporate form at the end of the nineteenth century); see also Christopher L. Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic 259 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1993) (“By midcentury, on and off the farm, it seems likely that the proportion of productively engaged Americans employed by others—about one-third in 1820—had increased to about one-half.”).
[151] It cannot. See Hapgood v. Hewitt, 119 U.S. 226 (1886). In Hapgood, a mechanical expert had been hired by a corporation as vice president, and later superintendent, to create plows and other goods, and to supervise generally the manufacturing department. Id. at 229. While in the corporation’s employ, the expert was asked with creating an iron plow similar to the company’s existing wooden ones, and he did so within the corporation’s employ, during working hours, using employees and corporate materials. Id. at 230. While he was inventing these plows, he never claimed a property ownership, but when he left he made his own, patented the improvements, and sought money from the corporation for its use of the improvements. Id. at 232. The Court held that he was not required to assign his patent to the corporation, but the corporation had received a “naked license to make and sell the patented improvement,” Id. at 233. However, the corporation had, in the meantime, dissolved and the stockholders had created a new corporation, which was its successor in interest; the Court held that the new corporation did not benefit from the shop right. Id. at 232–34. Nevertheless, in Lane & Bodley Co. v. Locke, the Supreme Court determined that a shop right created during a partnership carried over after incorporation, because of the close affinity between the two corporate entities and because the inventor had ratified the transfer by acknowledging the incorporated entity was the successor to the partnership. 150 U.S. at 196.
[152] Carlisle, supra note 94, at 227.
[153] Dennis Crouch, The Changing Nature Inventing: Collaborative Inventing, Patent Law Blog (Patently-O) (Jul. 9, 2009, 9:28 AM), http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/07/the-changing-nature-inventing-collaborative-inventing.html (“This data is derived from a sample of 750,000 patents issued from August 1971 through February 2009. All reported results are significant at the 99% confidence level.”); see also Dennis Crouch, Person(s) Skilled in the Art: Should the Now Established Model of Team-Based Inventing Impact the Obviousness Analysis?, Patent Law Blog (Patently-O) (May 17, 2011, 5:24 PM), http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/05/persons-skilled-in-the-art-should-the-now-established-model-of-team-based-inventing-impact-the-obviousness-analysis.html [hereinafter Team-Based Inventing] (“In [1852], 82% of patents listed only one inventor and a mere 3% listed three or more inventors. By 2011, the statistics had inverted. Less than one-third (32%) of patents issued so far this year list just a single inventor and 43% identify three or more inventors. During this 60-year period, the average number of inventors per patent has more than doubled.”); Dennis Crouch, Cross-Border Inventors, Patent Law Blog (Patently-O) (Nov. 21, 2010, 8:06 PM), http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/11/cross-border-inventors.html (“The number of inventors per patent has been steadily increasing over the past forty years. Patents issued during the past six months, have an average of 2.7 inventors per patent. In all, 68% of these patents list multiple inventors with 13% listing five or more inventors. Prior to 1990, most patents listed only one inventor.”).
[154] Team-Based Inventing, supra note 153.
[155] See Louis Galambes, The American Economy and the Reorganization of the Sources of Knowledge, in The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860–1920 269, 277 (Alexandra Oleson and John Voss eds., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press 1979).
[156] See Aalmuhammed v. Lee, 202 F. 3d 1227 (9th Cir. 2000), discussed supra note 84.
[157] Littlefield v. Perry, 88 U.S. 205 (1875) (finding agreement to assign future inventions enforceable); Hulse v. Bonsack Mach. Co., 65 F. 864, 867–68 (4th Cir. 1895) (finding pre-invention assignment contract enforceable); cf. Fisk, supra note 99, at 1191 (“At the end of the nineteenth century, the number of reported decisions enforcing employee patent assignments began steadily to increase.”). But cf. Aspinwall Mfg. Co. v. Gill, 32 F. 697, 700 (C.C.D.N.J. 1887) (“A naked assignment or agreement to assign, in gross, a man’s future labors as an author or inventor—in other words, a mortgage on a man’s brain, to bind all its future products—does not address itself favorably to our consideration.”); Eustis Mfg. Co. v. Eustis, 27 A. 439, 442–43 (N.J. Ch. 1893) (finding despite agreement that employee would give employing company “the benefit of any and all patents for cooking utensils made by or issued to him during the term of his office and employment,” company held only an exclusive license of the patents, not ownership).
[158] Noble, supra note 8.
[159] See id.; Rights of Employed Inventors: Hearing on H.R. 4732 and H.R. 6635 Before the H. Subcomm. on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice, 97th Cong. 1 (1982) (remarks of Rep. Robert Kastenmeier quoting U.S. Patent Office report); see also William P. Hovell, Note, Patent Ownership: An Employer’s Rights to His Employee’s Inventions, 58 Notre Dame L. Rev. 863, 864 (1983); Robert L. Gullette, State Legislation Governing Ownership Rights in Inventions Under Employee Invention Agreements, 62 J. Pat. Off. Soc’y 732, 738–39 (1980).
[160] Crouch & Rantanen, supra note 9.
[161] Intellectual Property Owners Association, Top 300 Organizations Granted U.S. Patents in 2010, The IP Record, at 9–17 (2011).
[162] See supra Part I.B.
[163] See Stanford, 131 S. Ct. at 2192 (2011) (holding that Stanford did not hold the rights to a patent that was allegedly infringed by Roche’s HIV test kits); Abbott Point of Care Inc. v. Epocal Inc., 666 F.3d 1299, 1304 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (affirming the dismissal of Abbott complaint for lack of standing to bring suit based on blood sample testing patents); see also Banks v. Unisys Corp., 228 F.3d 1357, 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2000) (as employee did not sign employer’s “standard form for assignment of inventive rights,” fact issues precluded summary judgment determination of whether the hired-to-invent doctrine applied); Mallinckrodt Inc. v. Masimo Corp., 293 F. Supp. 2d 1102, 1106 (C.D. Cal. 2003) (employee’s release of ownership claims to product did not include release of ownership of ideas later patented by employee); cf. Teets v. Chromalloy Gas Turbine Corp., 83 F.3d 403, 409 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (reversing district court finding of employee ownership due to implied-in-fact contract to assign rights to employer). But see Preston v. Marathon Oil Co., 684 F.3d 1276, 1288–89 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (holding post-employment employee agreement that included automatic patent assignment provision with only continued employment as consideration was valid and enforceable).
[164] Stanford, 131 S. Ct. at 2192, 2199. The Supreme Court expressly did not address Roche’s “shop right” or license arguments. Id. at 2193 n.1.
[165] Abbott, 666 F.3d at 1300.
[167] Id. at 1300, 1303–04.
[168] Id. at 1300.
[169] Id. at 1303.
[170] Cmty. For Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, 751–52 (1989).
[171] See supra Part I.A.
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