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In several major countries, companies are required to compensate employee inventors, a burden on in-house IP lawyers

The workload of in-house patent counsel must rise, to some extent, in countries where statutes require companies to compensate their employee inventors. As laid out in an excellent supplement to the ACC Docket, Nov. 2010 at 33, those countries include such large-scale patent companies as China, Japan, Korea and Germany.

Not only to patent lawyers have to vet invention disclosures, take part in patent review committees and prosecute patents around the world, in those four countries they also have to negotiate and record terms to share profits with inventors from their company. That role would be stressful and awkward, almost a conflict of interest (See my post of Jan. 27, 2006: incentives to researchers at H-P; Oct. 10, 2006: Dial Corp. and its awards; July 25, 2007: Halliburton Energy’s policy; Sept. 25, 2008: incentives at LexisNexis; Feb. 6, 2009: higher ROI for R&D with inventor rewards; and March 27, 2009: pros and cons of invention awards.).