Who Owns Employee-Created Invention

Dear Rich: This is a question related to the ownership of the invention between the employer and employee. I was employed by a company and I created an invention at work. The product that I invented was not related to any company business nor did I design the product using any knowledge that I acquired from the job; I just used the computer at work. In its program guidelines, the company said that if the invention was company business related, the company own the right although if the company was not interested in pursuing, it would release it and give the right back to the employee. If the project was not related to the company business, but the company was interested, then it would negotiate with the employee as to how two parties work together. If it was not interested, then the employee was free to do whatever he wanted.The employment agreement did say that if the employee uses any company resource to create anything, the company owns the rights. I left the company shortly after and a few months later, the company came back and proposed that we jointly submit the invention to a large corporation. They did not want to put any money in patenting. Without IP protection, I was not willing to go along. I told the company that I wanted to pursue the invention further on my own. A few days later, I received two documents that I requested --  a signed NDA and a letter of release, stating that I am the sole legal owner of the invention and that the company will not claim any legal right in the future: Is it safe for me to say that I now truly own the legal right of my invention (if I get the patent)? It seems that the guideline somewhat contradicts the terms in the employment agreement. My assumption is that the letter release should override the employment agreement.
Long Question; Short Answer Dept. You need to see an IP attorney. We believe the letter granting all rights will trump prior agreements but we couldn't say for sure without looking at the papers. If you're still interested in patenting the invention, you need to confirm your ownership and you also need to check your deadlines particularly if the invention has been disclosed or published. Here's a collection of articles that may help you sort out ownership issues and here's a previous entry relevant for California inventor-employees.
BTW, speaking of inventors, today (actually yesterday) marks the one-year anniversary of the America Invents Act and seven provisions of the AIA go into effect: inventor's oath or declaration; preissuance submissions; supplemental examination; citation of patent owner claim scope statements; post grant review; inter partes review; and covered business method review. Read more about it at our AIA timeline.

Does Site Owner Own Blog Post?

Dear Rich: Are an author’s blog posts the copyrighted material of that author, regardless of whose blog he or she posts on. Example, your blog is Nolo’s IP blog but if a post is authored by you, the words you wrote would be yours and you’d be free to republish in another work you write, right? I have a friend who is part owner of a site who wrote some blog posts based on company materials. But the words and thoughts are clearly those of the author/part-owner and every post has a byline to the author/part-owner. So who's material is it? For the sake of full disclosure (and even without FTC goading) the Dear Rich Staff acknowledges that it is employed by Nolo and this blog is created within the course of our employment. That makes Nolo the copyright owner. In other words, once these words ejected from our cerebrum and fixed on this screen, we relinquished ownership (a disclosure likely to haunt us during a future deposition.)
Author/Owner issues. In your question, the blogger is not an employee. Typically, the only way that a non-employee gives up ownership to blog material is by a written transfer (typically an assignment or a work made for hire agreement). But in your question, the blogger is a part-time owner. That raises a different set of issues. What type of business form is it -- partnership, LLC or corporation? If it is a corporation or LLC and the blogger is an officer, the blogger/owner may have written or fiduciary obligations. Alternatively, the corporation's or LLC's owners may have obligations not to compete -- something that might occur if the material was used for other purposes. If it is a partnership (the default for a group of owners who don't do anything formal), is the blog-writing considered part of the blogger/partner's contribution? That may affect claims to ownership. Finally, if the blog is derived from existing company-generated material or research there may be co-authorship or co-ownership issues. That doesn't mean the blogger can't republish it ... but the blogger would have to account to the co-authors if any money was earned.

Does Ruling Mean University Doesn't Own Rights?

Dear Rich: I read that the Supreme Court ruled that universities can't claim ownership of inventions? Is this ruling retroactive or does it only affect inventions that occur after the ruling? We think you may have misinterpreted things. If you're one of the thousands of scientists, professors, or instructors who have assigned rights to a university, we're sorry to have to break it to you but the Supreme Court's recent ruling doesn't change the landscape quite as much as the headlines seem to promise (BTW, the latter link is one of the better explanations of the case).
What Happened? In a case involving Stanford University and the Roche pharmaceutical company, the Court was faced with two agreements signed by a university scientist: one in which he promised to assign rights to the university; and another in which he actually assigned rights to a company that was later purchased by Roche. The Supreme Court ruled that the agreement in which rights were actually assigned took precedence over the agreement in which rights were promised.
The Bayh-Dole Act. Stanford's position was that the inventor's rights automatically vested in the university under the Bayh-Dole Act. The Bayh-Dole Act, enacted in 1980, permits universities to claim patent rights in inventions created with federal funding at a university. The university may then license these discoveries to private industry—a practice some critics have likened to corporate welfare. Curiously, one of the prerequisites for the university to claim these rights is that the university must have written agreements with its faculty and technical staff requiring disclosure and assignment of inventions. The ruling won't invalidate past assignments. But problems may occur in cases like this one, where two assignments appear to conflict. In addition, you can expect that universities will stop using language in which inventors promise to assign and instead automatically assign inventions. That seems like a silly distinction to the rest of the world but there has to be some justification for patent lawyer fees.