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[two2tango]

Hi,

What is the Statue for the number of inventors in a patent application, is it limited by the number of independent claims.

Thanks!

[khazzah]

What is the Statue for the number of inventors in a patent application, is it limited by the number of independent claims.

Your question is not clear. What do you mean by "statue"? Did you mean "statute"? Did you mean "limit" ?

Did you mean "how do you determine the identity and number of of inventors"

[George White]

Everyone who made a conceptual contribution to at least one claim (ind. OR dep.) is an inventor. There is no limit or one-to-one corespondence between ind. claims and inventors.

--George

[JimIvey]

One thing I would add (just to make it explicit) is that a patent is invalid if it names a non-inventor as an inventor or if it fails to name an inventor as such.

As George noted, absolutely everyone who contributed an idea that ended up in a claim of the patent must be named and no one else.

I'm not sure if the question comes from an idea in which a very large number of people would like to be named or wondering about a vulnerability in a patent listing numerous inventors.  In the former case, you can't just name everyone whose contribution you'd like to acknowledge as you could in an academic paper.  In the latter case, you've got to do the whole complex litigation thing to get at enough information to identify improper inventorship.

Regards.