Isaac
Senior Member
Posts: 3472
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Re: Ownership of invention (hire to invent)
« Reply #6 on: Oct 8th, 2007, 3:41pm » |
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on Oct 8th, 2007, 1:59pm, rick hoang wrote:| I guess the only question now is, what is Company B's relationship with our company in CA? Unless that is answered then we won't be able to identify what state laws can be legally enforced. |
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While I think the law of the jurisdiction is important, I agree with Bill that the issue is primarily unrelated to intellectual property law, but is resolvable by construing the meaning of the terms of your agreement. Even if you did own a copyright or patent covering the contents master file, you probably couldn't use an infringement theory to pry the particular physical copy out of the hands of the contractor unless the contractor made an infringing use of the material. Trying to extract more money out of you to turn over the master file would not constitute copyright or patent infringement.
So the real issue is whether the files you wanted are reasonably construed as something your agreement covers. I suspect that the answer would be fairly consistent in most jurisdictions, but obviously I don't know all of the facts.
From your description it seems highly unlikely that company B were employees of your company in any sense that would help resolve the issue in your favor.
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