patent inventor

In patent law, an inventor is the person, or persons in United States patent law, who contribute to the claims of a patentable invention. In some patent law frameworks, however, such as in the European Patent Convention (EPC) and its case law, no explicit, accurate definition of who exactly is an inventor is provided. The definition may slightly vary from one European country to another. Inventorship is generally not considered to be a patentability criterion under European patent law. Under older U.S. case law, an inventor is the one with "intellectual domination" over the inventive process and not merely one who assists in its reduction to practice. In the contemporary U.S. patent law inventor is defined as the person, who "conceived a claim". The persons who only made prototypes or sugg...