Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo

Sommario

1. Cenni storici della disciplina della proprietà intellettuale nel sistema giuridico americano. – 2. Natura e scopo del sistema brevettuale americano. – 3. Inventori accademici, università e Governo: una controversa allocazione dei diritti patrimoniali derivanti dall’invenzione realizzata nell’adempimento di un rapporto di impiego. – 4. La natura del rapporto di lavoro come elemento di individuazione della titolarità dei diritti patrimoniali. – 5. Il Bayh-Dole Act. – 6. Alcune ragioni perché i professori e non le università dovrebbero avere la proprietà dei diritti sulle loro invenzioni. – 7. Proposte per accrescere i diritti degli inventori.

AbstractThe American Constitution expressly protects inventions by the grant of exclusive rights (monopolies) for a limited time to inventors. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 states: «The Congress shall have the power (…) to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writing and Discoveries». Although the intellectual property clause grants the Congress the legislative power over the patent issues, the question of patent ownership has not been yet regulated by federal acts. However, the US common law has developed a number of principles which fill this large normative gap. According to the Supreme Court, who played an outstanding role in the development of the US patent law: «The economic philosophy behind the clause empowering Congress to grant patents and copyrights is the conviction that encouragement of individual effort by personal gain is the best way to advance public welfare through the talents of authors and inventors in science and useful Arts». Specifically, we will focus our attention on the landmark case United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corporation rendered by the Supreme Court on 1933, where the Supreme High Court faces the delicate issue of the patent ownership. Despite Dubilier principles, many American universities have adopted policies to claim ownership of patentable inventions, enforcing faculty’s assignment of their ownership rights to the university. This latter aspect will be analyzed in this study. In particular, this article will deal with the delicate issue of ownership of patents rights between an organization (university) and its employees (professor/researcher). The question we will try to answer is who owns the intellectual property of patents developed by academic inventors employed by universities with federal research grants.