- Employees who conceive patentable ideas while working can walk away with them if they leave the company, potentially starting a competing, profitable business.
- Employment agreements should include a clause requiring employees to assign invention rights to the company, but many companies fail to have or enforce this.
- In the case discussed, an engineer left a company focused on GPS technology for surveying applications and took valuable patentable ideas with him.
- The former employer missed out on what could have been a significant win, losing a profitable opportunity it could have captured without costly or risky litigation.
Summary: What would happen if your top engineers walked out the door with a patentable idea?
As the CEO of a technologies company, have you thought about what would happen if your top engineers walked out the door with a patentable idea and started a very profitable business? Every employment agreement these days should have a clause obligating employees to assign their rights and invention to your company. However, this doesn’t always happen. Every engineer will leave their current position at some point, and some of them will leave with extremely valuable ideas in their heads that they have been moonlighting on.
In today’s PatentCast, discover how an engineer walked out with valuable patentable ideas when his company was focused on GPS technologies for surveying applications. This former employer lost out on the “Big Win” when they could have had a very profitable idea without expensive or risky litigation.
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