Assignments & Licenses

Assignments are extremely important in the patent world. Failure to properly assign rights can lead to unnecessary litigation, and possible liability on the part of both the inventor and the patent attorney. This can happen for all sorts of reasons, including death or disability of an inventor, reluctance of an inventor to file an assignment due to a separation from a company, divorce, and so forth. It thus behooves a patent attorney to at least consider getting an assignment on file quite early in the patenting process. A good timekeeping/billing system should automatically calendar one or more reminders to file an assignment.