Collaborating on your Invention

More often than not, two minds are better than one. Add in several more brains, you get even better. And when it comes to inventions, sometimes you will need all the help you can get. Especially if that help is in the technical form.

Although collaboration is often the lifeblood of any great invention, you should also know that collaboration also necessitates proper credit being given. But this credit is not just an Academy Awards speech where the actress thanks everyone from her agent down to the hair dresser to her assistant that walks her dogs during her auditions. Unlike the actress, when you give credit on an invention you are also giving some money away (possibly).

Let's say that you and a buddy are working on a new invention that is a green car transmission that is an assembly of 1,000 different parts. When it comes to the invention itself, it was a labor of love and you've been working on it over the past 5 years or so dedicating at least 20 hours per week on it. You spent over $50,000 on it for R&D. Your buddy, on the other hand, is kind of lazy. And in that 5 years he told you to use a rubber gasket on one of the parts. And just to not make him feel bad, you decide to add that into the claims of the patent application to make him feel good about himself. And upon the advice of your patent attorney you name him a co-inventor.

Now, as logic and reason would have it, you should be given 99.9% of the royalties and rights in the patent because it was almost all your genius and hard work. That .01% that your buddy contributed was just a "pity credit". As such, he should only get .01% of any royalties, etc. even though you might not even use his advice into your final products anyway.

Well, unfortunately, as per patent law, you and your lazy buddy are now 50-50 partners. There are going to be no courtroom disputes, no lawsuits, etc of you trying to prove how much more you provided to the endeavor as your buddy. Bottom line: if your buddies' contributions make its way into the claims of the patent, he becomes a co-inventor. And as such, without an agreement to the contrary, he is now entitled to 50% of those royalties. No ifs ands or buts.

You should also know that failure to properly credit someone who contributed to the claims of your patent is grounds for dismissal or rescission of your patent rights.

Collaboration is great. You just need to think long and hard about what gets into the claims of your patent.