Section 2 Patents and Designs Act 1971

Section 2 of the Patents and Designs Act 1971 is about Right to patent. It is under ‘Patents’ of the Act. It provides as follows:

(1) Subject to this section, the right to a patent in respect of an invention is vested in the statutory inventor, that is to say, the person who, whether or not he is the true inventor, is the first to file, or validly to claim a foreign priority for, a patent application in respect of the invention.

(2) The true inventor is entitled to be named as such in the patent, whether or not he is also the statutory inventor, and the entitlement in question shall not be modifiable by contract.

(3) If the essential elements of a patent application have been obtained by the purported applicant from the invention of another person (or from that other person’s successor in title) without the consent of that other person (or his said successor) both to the obtaining of those essential elements and to the filing of the application, all rights in the application and in any patent granted in pursuance of it shall be deemed to be transferred to that other person or his said successor, as the case may be.

(4) Where an invention is made in the course of employment or in the execution of a contract for the performance of specified work, the right to a patent in the invention is vested in the employer or, as the case may be, in the person who commissioned the work:

Provided that, where the inventor is an employee, then–
(a) if-
(i) his contract of employment does not require him to exercise any inventive activity but he has in making the invention used data or means that his employment has put at his disposal; or
(ii) the invention is of exceptional importance, he is entitled to fair remuneration taking into account his salary and the importance of the invention; and

(b) the entitlement in question is not modifiable by contract and may be enforced
by civil proceedings.

(5) A person is not an inventor for the purposes of this section if he has merely assisted in doing work connected with the development of an invention without contributing any inventive activity.

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