PO Having been working on pattern recognition correlators at a university, Dr Y then took up employment with the claimant where he continued such work. However, he left the claimant after just over a year and went back to the university. The patent application in suit, which is concerned with such correlators, was filed by Dr Y and a university colleague two years later.
It was common ground that some aspects of the invention had been conceived by Dr Y before he took up employment with the claimant and that the whole invention had been made at latest by the time Dr Y left that employment. The issue was whether the use of two particular features was conceived before the period of employment – in which case the rights in them belonged to the patent applicants by virtue of section 7 – or during that period – in which case the rights belonged to the claimant by virtue of section 39. The hearing officer concluded from the evidence that the first had been conceived by Dr Y beforehand but the second had not. He then gave the parties an opportunity to agree a suitable order to reflect this finding, having first commented in general terms on the relief that each party had sought.
The hearing officer criticised the unnecessary verbosity of the evidence and extent to which argument and evidence had been muddled. Even though none of the evidence was tested by cross examination, the hearing officer was not prepared to accepted blindly the assertions made by the various deponents because some were not credible and in any case there were conflicts between them. Accordingly, he relied largely on the evidence afforded by the contemporary documents that had been exhibited. He rejected an argument from the claimant that the burden of proof shifted once the claimant had shown he knew about the whole of the invention before Dr Ys employment ceased.
Citations:
O/070/01, [2001] UKIntelP o07001
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Intellectual Property
Updated: 13 October 2022; Ref: scu.454135
