What is the primary distinction between inventor patents and owner patents?
Answer
The employer holds the legal rights as the assignee, not the engineer.
While an individual engineer may have numerous inventive credits attached to their name, the legal capacity to license, sell, or defend a patent typically resides with the assignee, which is the employing corporation. This separation allows companies to amass vast portfolios that hold significant market power, as the corporation is the entity that truly owns and controls the rights to the underlying technology, rather than the person who performed the work.
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