NTP Gets a Taste of Its Own Medicine

UltraAyla writes, "NTP's patent suits seem to have attracted the attention of Oren Tavory, a man who claims to have worked on a project with NTP founder Thomas Campana back in 1991. From the article: 'In September, Tavory filed a lawsuit against NTP in U.S. District Court in Richmond, VA, demanding that a judge issue a court order naming him as co-inventor on seven NTP patents, and accusing NTP of copyright infringement and unjust enrichment.'"

Comments

leaving an inventor off a patent

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that leaving an inventor off the list of inventors (or including someone who was not an inventor) was sufficient to invalidate a patent. I am not a patent lawyer, but that what I remembered from an intro to patent law course that I took many many years ago.

Can anyone comment who knows for sure?

Re:leaving an inventor off a patent

[Compulawyer]

It does not invalidate the patent. It makes the patent unenforceable. The difference is that if the patent is invalid, it is dead forever. if the patent is unenforceable, you can potentially fix the problem that made it unenforceable and obtain a good patent.

Inventorship is easy to fix but has potentially serious consequences. In the US, inventors are deemed to be owners of the patent unless or until those rights are assigned, usually to a company. An owner of a patent can profit from the patent without having to account to the other owners. In this case, for example, if this person succeeds in getting named as an inventor, and assuming that he is under no obligation through an employment or other contract to assign his rights to NTP, he can then potentially license the patents to Palm (who NTP is now suing), keep all the licensing proceeds, and effectively eliminate NTP's ability to collect anything from Palm.