A recent decision by the Australian Patent Office demonstrates
the risks of filing a patent application for an invention that one
was not responsible for conceiving. The decision of Vuly Pty
Ltd v Wei Yang [2020] APO 13, delivered on 28 February 2020,
resulted in a patent applicant losing ownership of his patent
applications to his ex-employer after it was found that he had
learned of the concept behind the invention from two work emails
that had been sent to him.
Background
The parties in the present dispute were Vuly Pty Ltd (Vuly), a
company that designed and manufactured trampolines, and Wei Yang, a
mechanical engineer and former employee of Vuly.
In July 2014, four months after the end of his employment at
Vuly, Mr Yang filed a Chinese patent application for a trampoline
with a distinctive support frame designed to provide improved
structural integrity. He subsequently filed a PCT application and
two Australian patent applications claiming priority from
