Patent decision

BL number

O/543/22

Concerning rights in

EP18275106.5

Hearing Officer

Mr H Jones

Decision date

22 June 2022

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Cygnet Texkimp Limited v Crompton Technology Group Limited

Provisions discussed

Sections 12, 13 and Rule 10

Keywords

Entitlement, Inventorship

Related Decisions

None

Summary

A claim to entitlement to an EP patent application plus family members based on the work of two of its employees in a collaborative project with the defendant. The parties worked together in developing advanced nacelle systems, the claimant being tasked with developing a wet out system for impregnating fibre with resin. The claimant withdrew from the project and soon afterwards the defendant filed a family of patent applications relating to an improved wet out system. Based on the evidence submitted, the hearing officer found that the defendant-™s own employees, the named inventors in the applications, had developed the idea set out in the applications, doing so largely due to problems that existed in the system being developed jointly with the claimant. The claim to entitlement failed. The defendant had argued that even if the claimant-™s employees were found to be inventors, it was still entitled to the applications due to terms of the Collaboration Agreement between the parties. Although it was not necessary for the hearing officer to consider this argument, the hearing officer agreed that this would have been the case. A separate argument by the claimant regarding whether the NDA with a third-party resin supplier had the effect of retaining rights to the invention with the claimant was rejected.

Full decisionO/543/22  505Kb