The Constitution mandates that the U.S. patent system promote the progress of science and useful arts. Naming and crediting all inventors has long been central to that mandate. While the Patent Act allows correction of inventorship errors, patentees should not take that remedy for granted. In Fortress, the Federal Circuit held that failure to name all inventors renders a patent invalid if the error cannot be cured.
Plaintiff and patent owner Fortress Iron, LP (“Fortress”) developed a vertical cable railing system. Its employees initially conceived of and sketched the system, then worked with manufacturing partners in China to build a prototype. This revealed a problem where the vertical cables rotated during tensioning. Employees of the partner company, Lin and Huang, proposed solutions that were incorporated into the product. Fortress obtained patents covering the advancements, but named only its own employees as inventors. Fortress sued competitor Digger Specialties, Inc. (“DSI”)
