Inventions Made for Hire Joshua L. Simmons Kirkland & Ellis LLP
2 N.Y.U. J. Intell. Prop. & Ent. L. 1 Despite the continued
reliance on the rhetorical device that modern invention is
performed by individual inventors in their garages, few would
disagree that today most patentable inventive activity occurs in
corporate and university settings and that most individuals who
would be labeled “inventors” in the twenty-first century are
employees of a corporate entity. Yet, while copyright law’s work
made for hire doctrine automatically vests employers with
ownership of works made within their employees’ scope of
employment, except in a few limited circumstances, patent law
continues to require a written assignment of the rights to a
patented invention. This difference between copyright law and
patent law can be explained by the differences between the needs
of the two disciplines in the nineteenth century that led to
their modern formulations. In particular, whereas copyrighted
works in the nineteenth century were