An excellent text for clients to read before meeting with attorneys so they'll understand the fundamentals of patent, copyright, trade secret, trademark, mask work, and unfair competition laws. This is not a "do-it-yourself" manual but rather a ready reference tool for inventors or creators that will generate maximum efficiencies in obtaining, preserving and enforcing their intellectual property rights. It explains why they need to secure the services of IPR attorneys. Coverage includes employment contracts, including the ability of engineers to take confidential and secret knowledge to a new job, shop rights and information to help an entrepreneur establish a non-conflicting enterprise when leaving their prior employment. Sample forms of contracts, contract clauses, and points to consider before signing employment agreements are included. Coverage of copyright, software protection, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as the procedural variances in international intellectual property laws and procedures.

Intellectual property law is currently exploding, as demonstrated by the growth of technology transfer offices in universities. More and more scientists, companies, and institutions are rushing to secure intellectual property rights for their ideas and inventions. This process frustrates many people; patent laws are constantly changing, and most books about them are either overly technical or boring. Protecting Your Ideas: The Inventor's Guide to Patents is a succinct, straightforward guide to the system. This guide presents the steps involved in obtaining patent protection for inventions. It is easy to read and brimming with essential information and advice compounded from FAQs posed by the author's academic and industrial clientele. The text includes tips, warnings, and examples that guide the reader through the invention process so patent rights are not jeopardized. Checklists and other helpful information are provided to assist the inventor preparing to enter the patent process. The book includes valuable resource information and business guidance to protect the inventor from consumer fraud that is sometimes associated with the patent process. Protecting and Idea is a must read for every engineer, scientist, or amateur inventor. - Simple, easy-to-read format demystifies the patent process - Numerous example patents help to illustrate the issues involved - Provides an overview of the types of intellectual property protection - Incorporates up-to-date information about U.S. patent laws - Advises inventors about the do's and don'ts of patenting - Includes useful resources for helping inventors safeguard their ideas

Although employers are required to pay compensation for employee inventions under the laws in many countries, existing legal literature has never critically examined whether such compensation actually gives employee inventors an incentive to invent as the legislature intends. This book addresses the issue through reference to recent, large-scale surveys on the motivation of employee inventors (in Europe, the United States and Japan) and studies in social psychology and econometrics, arguing that the compensation is unlikely to boost the motivation, productivity and creativity of employee inventors, and thereby encourage the creation of inventions. It also discusses the ownership of inventions made by university researchers, giving due consideration to the need to ensure open science and their academic freedom. Challenging popular assumptions, this book provides a solution to a critical issue by arguing that compensation for employee inventions should not be made mandatory regardless of jurisdiction because there is no legitimate reason to require employers to pay it. This means that patent law does not need to give employee inventors an 'incentive to invent' separately from the 'incentive to innovate' which is already given to employers.