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Intellectual property (IP) ownership can sometimes become a complex and contentious issue even though everyone is supposed to be working together. The likelihood of issues arises when multiple employees, contractors or collaborators have contributed to the creation of IP.
To avoid potential disputes, it is essential for companies to formalise their employees’, contractors’ and collaborators’ rights in terms of where the ownership of the resultant IP will reside, with the individual, group or the organisation.
Departing employees can also prove troublesome.
When employees leave, questions often arise regarding the ownership of any IP they helped create. Worse still, they may try to steal the IP for use elsewhere. This means it is vital organisations both set out their IP policies and their employees’ responsibilities in their employment contracts and also ensure they have robust security measures in place to prevent possible IP theft.
Another IP ownership issue many organisations encounter related to third-party IP. Today many organisations use third-party IP under license. However, any failure to comply with the associated third-party IP agreements can lead to serious legal issues for both the owner and the licensee.
And the types of issues around IP ownership are continuing to evolve.
We are now in an era in which data holds the power. More and more inventions either use or produce data. Moreover, the lion share of the value associated with these inventions will lie within the data rather than the tech. This means the ownership of all the data being used or produced needs to be clearly defined, managed and stored in accordance with the regulations of the country in which is it either used or produced.
The influence of AI can’t be ignored either. While the picture around AI-generated/related IP is continuing to evolve, it is already introducing new ownership and legal challenges that must be acknowledged and tackled correctly.
