An inventor to a patent is someone who makes an inventive
contribution to the invention as claimed in one of the claims of
that patent. It follows that the rights to the patent originates
with the inventor1 and these rights can then be
transferred to another party.
In many contexts, the inventor or inventors will be an employee
of a company and that company will desire to have the rights in the
patent transferred to it. One should not assume that this transfer
of rights will necessarily be a straight-forward process in every
situation. While the Copyright Act contains an explicit
provision that makes the employer the first owner of the copyright
in an artistic work created by an employee2, an
analogous provision is not found in the Patent Act.
Therefore, whereas the creator of Passe Partout was found to not be
the owner of the copyright in the TV show because he was employed
by Télé-Québec at the time, the outcome may
well have been different if the issue involved
