Duty to inform the inventors

Since August 6, 2015, Article 175 from the Macron Act n°2015-990 makes it necessary for the company to inform its employed inventor about the progress of the granting procedure of the patent relative to its invention. More precisely, the employer must inform the employed inventor of the filing date of the patent application and the granting date of the patent, if need be.

This duty concerns work-related inventions, namely inventions developed within the company as part of an inventive mission. The inventive mission can be permanent, namely written in the employment contract et corresponding to the actual functions of the employee, or occasional, namely corresponding to entrusted studies as part of an explicitly given mission.

For such work-related missions, according to Article L611-7 from French Intellectual Property Code, the employer is the owner of the invention developed by the employee and the employee shall be entitled to an additional compensation determined by the collective agreement, the company-level agreement or the employment contract.

No terms or deadline are specified to the company to meet this duty of information. In order to avoid any litigation relative to the additional compensation, we advise to transmit a copy of the filed patent application and/or the granted patent to the employee as soon as possible.

Furthermore, this duty of information is valid for any industrial property title, namely the patent, but also a divisional patent application or the utility patent protection.