Employee Inventions

The German Employee Inventions Act regulates the interaction of rights and obligations between employers and employee inventors, ensuring a fair compensation for inventions made in the course of their employment.

The right to inventions automatically passes from the employee inventor to the employer, provided that the employee has reported the invention to the employer in accordance with the statutory requirements. As a result of the transfer of the invention to the employer, the inventor is entitled to remuneration.

The principles and factors for calculating this remuneration are the subject of extensive case law and frequently a point of contention between employers and inventors. If the employer has no interest in an invention, he may avoid the automatic transfer of rights, and the resulting remuneration claim, by releasing the invention to the inventor within four months. This however remains the exception in practice.

We provide comprehensive counsel to our clients in all phases of employee invention law: From the disclosure of the invention, through the calculation of the inventors’ remunerations, to the efficient registration and exploitation of intellectual property rights. We also support our clients in developing and setting up internal processes for utilizing inventions and further securing their rights.

In ensuring a comprehensive protection strategy, we take related areas of law into account, such as patent law, design law, and licensing law, to ensure the lasting protection of your innovations. In doing so, we can draw on the specific expertise of Grünecker patent attorneys from all technical fields.

In the event of disputes, Grünecker attorneys represent clients before the competent courts or the Arbitration Board of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office.