CONCEPTION AND MISCONCEPTION IN JOINT INVENTORSHIP AARON X. FELLMETH *
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................73 I. THE LAW OF INVENTION AND INVENTORSHIP .................................................80 A. The Patent Law Concept of Invention ......................................................80 1. The Role of Conception .......................................................................83 2. The Role of the Claims ........................................................................88 B. Inventorship and Joint Inventorship.........................................................94 1. The Evolved Doctrine..........................................................................94 2. The Distorting Effect of Claims Fixation ..........................................106 C. The Strong Presumption of Validity in Inventorship Analysis ...............111 II. RELINKING INVENTORSHIP ANALYSIS TO TECHNOLOGY POLICY ..................118 A. Legislative History of the 1984 Patent Law Amendments Act ...............119 B. Reconstructing Inventorship...................................................................128 1. Equity and Strategic Nonjoinder ......................................................128 2. Restoring Incentives for Collaborative Research .............................134 CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................139 INTRODUCTION It is an axiom of patent law that utility patents protect “inventions” only; it is a paradox of patent law that the Patent Act does not define “invention” except tautologically: “The term ‘invention’ means invention or discovery.” 1 Given that patents are designed to reward inventors for the disclosure of their inventions, 2 it *
Professor, Arizona State University College of Law; J.D., Yale Law School; M.A., Yale University; B.A., University of California, Berkeley. The author thanks Dennis Karjala and Mark Lemley for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. 1 35 U.S.C. § 100(a) (2006). Half of this definition is semicircular, the other half compounds its own obscurity by failing to define a “discovery,” resulting in much confusion and misunderstanding as to the scope of patentable subject matter. See Linda J. Demaine & Aaron X. Fellmeth, Reinventing the Double Helix: A Novel and Nonobvious Conception of the Biotechnology Patent, 55 STAN. L. REV. 303, 368-77 (2002-2003). 2 See Grant v. Raymond, 312 U.S. 218, 241-42 (1832); Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 5-8 (1966).
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