Re: Power of Attorney in Employment Agreement

I haven't seen it in the context of copyright, where either the employment agreement or contractor's work for hire agreement would entitle the employer or contractor to claim the copyright without need for a power of attorney. In patent law, however, the inventor has to claim the invention even if the employer or contractor owns it under the shop rule or by agreement. I'm not a patent lawyer, and I suspect the inventor still has to claim the invention; but the power of attorney might be useful for hiring counsel to do a patent search and prepare an application on behalf of the inventor, or for other formalities at the PTO.

John Noble

At 2:35 PM -0400 9/25/06, Heather Vargas wrote:
>I have seen a few employment and independent contractor agreements
>recently that contain a power of attorney from the
>employee/contractor to the employer/company to prosecute
>copyright/patent applications or otherwise act in the employee's
>stead with respect to intellectual property matters for work done
>for the company. Has anyone seen any case law on whether this is
>acceptable? Any opinions on whether this is a good/bad idea?
>Necessary? For those in favor, does anyone have good form language
>that they might be willing to share?
>
>Thanks.
>
>
>
>This e-mail message, together with any attachments, is confidential.
>If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the author
>immediately and destroy this message. Also, refrain from copying,
>disclosing or using the contents in any way.
>
>
>#############################################################
>This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to
> the mailing list <CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org>.
>To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <CNI-COPYRIGHT-off[_at_]cni.org>
>To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <CNI-COPYRIGHT-digest[_at_]cni.org>
>To switch to the INDEX mode, E-mail to <CNI-COPYRIGHT-index[_at_]cni.org>
>To postpone your subscription, E-mail to <CNI-COPYRIGHT-null[_at_]cni.org>
>To resume mail list message delivery from postpone mode, E-mail to
><CNI-COPYRIGHT-feed[_at_]cni.org>
>Send administrative queries to <CNI-COPYRIGHT-request[_at_]cni.org>
>
>Visit the CNI-COPYRIGHT e-mail list archive at
><https://mail2.cni.org/Lists/CNI-COPYRIGHT/>.
Received on Tue Sep 26 2006 - 03:20:45 GMT