

 MIT accuses company of denying its researcher credit for anti-cancer device - ilamont
http://www.universalhub.com/2010/mit-accuses-company-denying-its-researcher-credit

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nkassis
This reminds me a little of a book I just read "The Man Who Invented the
Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer"

A similar thing happened between Atanasoff and the guys who designed ENIAC. It
led to a huge court battle in the 70s where Honywell & CDC were fighting IBM
and cie's patents. It was found out that John Mauchly, one of the two main
creators of ENIAC, visited Atanasoff in Iowa while Atanasoff was building the
first electronic digital computer (I'm sure that's debated) and learn enough
about it that the court found that the patents he held with J. Presper Eckert
were most likely lifted from research Atanasoff was doing.

The fact that those patents have been overturned today is good, else IBM would
have killed the early PC industry.

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kingkilr
ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, by Scott
McCartney presents a slightly different view of the court case. It says that
though the courts were on shaky legal ground throwing the patents out (there
were fundamental differences between the ABC and ENIAC) it was really done to
advance the computing industry, similar to how one of the Ford's (I think)
early patents on the engine was ruled to only cover 2 cylinder engines (by
that time most cars were onto 4 cylinders, effectively preventing Ford from
maintaining a monopoly).

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tptacek
My understanding, from having filed a bunch of patents for different
companies, is that getting the inventors wrong is a Big Deal. Our IP lawyers
told us emphatically that we needed to make sure anyone involved with an
invention was a listed author.

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gte910h
I have heard the exact same thing. Any patent attorneys on here who can
explain the things that can go pearshaped?

~~~
hristov
Yes, getting the inventors wrong is a bad thing. Every inventor has an
ownership of the invention and initially has an ownership of the patent that
results from it. Usually when a company files a patent, they make sure they
get all inventors to sign assignments which give their rights to the invention
and patent to the company. But if they did not get all inventors to sign, and
an unnamed inventor can later prove that he/she was actually one of the
inventors, then the unnamed inventor will be held to be part owner of the
patent and any inventions that are listed in there.

Thus, a company can invest tens of thousands of dollars into a patent and
millions of dollars into developing the patented technology and then an
unnamed inventor may appear out of the blue and claim ownership.

So yes, it is important to name all the actual inventors.

BTW, this is not legals advice, just academic, theoretic discussion. There are
many more complicated issues that can and will come up in real life, so I hope
nobody actually tries to extract legal advice from this.

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kljensen
I'd like to see the sponsored research agreement. MIT specifies these things
in all contacts. Not good for all parties involved because destroys much
"value".

