Re: [PIUG List] Incentives for employee inventors

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi Chris,

Can't help you viz your question in the UK, my understanding was that
inventors in the UK generally in fact got very little, and the courts
were disinclined to be sympathetic to their plight.

In France, there is no standard amount or scheme, although it is
obligatory to remunerate inventors for patented ideas independently of
their usual salary (what the law calls "complementary remuneration").

We have a National Commission for Employee Inventions (in French, the
CNIS), which is essentially an arbitration or dispute resolution entity.
If the parties are not happy with the decision of the CNIS, they can go
to court, or they can go to court directly without passing through the
CNIS. The commission has in the past had a habit of awarding
approximately 2 to 3 months salary to the inventor.

A decision from the Supreme Court in France involving Roussel-Uclaf
turned everything on its head and made the amount of complementary
remuneration dependent on the commercial success of the patented idea.
This case has been followed by lower courts decisions that have followed
the same line of reasoning. In theory then, inventors who have a mission
or duty to invent working for a French company have to be paid a
percentage of the profits of the exploited invention. The percentage
seems to vary between about 5 to 10% of revenue generated by
exploitation of the invention.

In addition, collective bargaining agreements, which had been in force
for a long time in the chemical, pharmaceutical and metalworking
industries, and covered certain aspects relating to complementary
remuneration have been qualified by the courts as inappropriate,
inapplicable or downright invalid.

Some of the schemes I have seen :

1) Fixed minimal amount on filing (say about a 1000 Euros), followed by
a further more substantial payment (between 3000 and 5000 Euros) upon
entry into national phases of a corresponding PCT application following
on from the first filing.

2) Percentage of profits scheme where the percentage lies in the 0.1% to
0.5% range of the revenue generated by exploitation of the invention.

3) Share or stock option attribution in the company. It is doubtful
whether attributing stock options or shares as such in France would be
considered valid, since they are not complementary remuneration as the
law (employment law) understands it.

Needless to say, there are all sorts of difficulties in trying to pay
someone a complementary remuneration once that person has left the
company (as often happens). The law requires that complementary
remuneration be treated as salary, which in turn requires social
security contributions to be paid. Obviously, if the invention is only
exploited after the employee has left the company, this poses a catch 22
situation. Neither the French administration nor the courts seem to have
found a way around this difficulty.


Alex Thurgood


Chris Torrero a écrit :
|
| I have been asked by my employer to research the issue of incentives an=
d
| rewards paid by companies to their employee inventors. I am aware of th=
e
| little used sections 39-43 of the Patents Act 1977 (as amended). I have
| also found much discussion of the German statutory provisions.
|
| What I would like to find are examples of schemes operated by UK
| companies to provide incentives/rewards to their employee inventors.
| What kind of rewards are paid and at what stage(s) of the process.
|
| If any readers could give outline details of schemes with which they ar=
e
| familiar, I would be very grateful
|
| Regards
|
| Chris Torrero
| Information Officer
| LGC Limited
| 020 8943 8483
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFHhyZ0t+LwVU+StZQRAot9AJ9cj+WiAbYFoHuiEqcAhDZgcKV4bQCbBUdj
vTFDlR636Kn1tW1PMA+daTk=
=6580
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PIUG List owner: Patent Information Users' Group Inc. (R), http://
www.piug.org
PIUG List rules and guidelines: http://www.piug.org/list.php
PIUG List admin: piug_discussion_list-owner(at)v2(dot)listbox(dot)com
PIUG Discussion List @ Listbox
13&id_secret=84645248-39f860
d_secret=76057446-50c748

Received on Fri Jan 11 2008 - 13:18:09