Patent Attorney and Founder
So I’ll patent assignment actually means an ownership change that’s right you’re giving up as the inventor of who owns the ability to make use and sell your invention it’s a big deal I’m JD Houvener owner founder and patent attorney here at bold patent’s Law Firm I’m here to talk about the Four Keys that you can’t miss about what is involved in a patent assignment so first up what is a patent assignment and I should say before we get started it’s not just those patents that are issued you can assign give up ownership of a patent application as well so the overall structure is a legal document it is a usually one or sometimes two pages where you the inventors or inventor if there’s just one is giving up their rights to make you sell and import which are the four bundles of Rights you get to exclude others from when you get a patent granted to one or more individuals or entity one of the most common places you see this is in employment agreements let’s say you’re working at a huge company like Amazon for example they’ve got an employment agreement in there is definitely a clause where you’ll be agreeing as you as you sign on to becoming an employee to give up right to give any rights of intellectual property that are developed in furtherance of your job right of your skills in your career to the company so even if you’re you invent no matter how wildly successful that invention is commercially or otherwise you actually assign your rights to the company they own the ability to monetize or you know move that into another entity the second big key is who executes a patent assignment I mentioned there’s two at least two parties there’s gonna be the assignee the one giving up the rights that’s the inventor or inventors and the assignor who’s the one that’s actually receiving that is usually a company or another individual in that transaction um so why are they valuable one of the most interesting ways that I explain to inventors and entrepreneurs is that are just getting started and opening up their own businesses is the ability to assign your invention that’s owned individually to the company and we usually recommend doing this while it’s still an application you can assign a pending a patent pending invention in the portfolio to a company and why would you do that was to limit your liability if you the individual is you’re going to contract let’s say with a manufacturer or with another third party and it’s involving the invention itself and it’s owned individually there is the ability for the manufacturer or the third party to sue you the inventor individually with respect to the product or whatever happened with the invention whereas if it’s now owned by the company you’ve got that Shield that limitation of liability between you and the third party another good reason is that oftentimes I know this isn’t always you know fun to hear inventors don’t always make the best business owners right the best CEOs they’re usually heads down you know working on the technology trying to bring about the next version and the owners are able to see kind of a bigger picture maybe more comfortable with marketing operations sales and you know collections so that’s where owners can come in you know non-technical folks can come in and help grow their company and have an ownership stake and all the IP assets including the physical assets as well all right the fourth key is where do you find them well patent assignments can be found online USPTO the United States patent and trademark office has an application on their website to go search and you can look by patent number look by inventor name lots of different things you’ll see on the link in the description below a full-length blog article that’ll show you and provide a link to go look it up so that is patent assignments in a nutshell if you want to learn more about it we do have a link below to schedule a free screening session to talk with one of our advisors on our team to see if you need to assign your patent or if you want to get started on the process no matter where you are click for a free 20-minute phone call with our firm don’t forget to click below and subscribe I will be posting videos like this at least once a week again I’m JD hoovener order founder and patent attorney here at bold patents have a great day everyone go big go bowl