Employee inventions: knowing how to classify the invention

When an invention is made by an employee, you need to be able to determine whether the employer or the employee is entitled to apply for a patent on the invention.

To determine who is the owner of this "patent right", the invention must be classified in one of the three categories set out in Article L. 611-7 of the French Intellectual Property Code:

• mission inventions, which belong to the employer;

• non-mission inventions attributable (by implication, to the employer) ;

• inventions not attributable (by implication, to the employer) and which therefore belong to the employee.

The purpose of this sheet is to present the different stages of reasoning and the criteria for classifying an employee invention. In practice, it is necessary to check the applicability of this legal regime beforehand.