Employee Claims Ownership of Office Creatives After Leaving: Can the Company Still Use Them?

Dear Professionals,

In the event of an employee claiming ownership of the creatives they developed on their office PC, can the company use these creatives even if the employee's salary was withheld?

Hi, Please check your Appointment Order to see if it includes any copyright or trademark clauses. If not, you need to include such clauses. The office system is provided to the employee for the purpose of carrying out office work, and any inventions made as part of the work are to be construed as the employer's inventions. Please refer to the following clauses:

"You will assign to the Company your entire right, title, and interest in any Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs for short, which term would include patents, trademarks, copyrights, designs, whether registered or not, and all improvements thereto) that you may make, solely or jointly with others, during the period of service, relating to any or all systems, services, and products manufactured or marketed or leased or developed by the Company.

The company shall at all times have the right to access and monitor all emails created, sent/received, or stored by you using company facilities and on the Company’s system at any time without giving you any prior notification. All such data and information shall be the property of the company at all times."

The claim of the employee is genuine. Your company should pay the cost for the product developed by the employee. The development is the intellectual property of the employee; the claim of the company for the use of the PC is absurd. Your company can certainly claim ownership where the person has been employed to develop the aforementioned product. The employee should take legal action for the illegal acts by the company in using his creative work and for unpaid salary even after the due date.

Just think about it. Who do we recognize as inventors, the lab owners, the lab, or the individual? It is nevertheless the individual rather than the institution.

I will disagree with Mr. Mohanty in this case. Where the work was done in the company, using its resources, then in most cases, it would belong to the company. However, it depends on the circumstances of the case, so please consult an intellectual property lawyer.

Thanks, Mr. Banerjee. I still hold my opinion valid. Your disagreement with my views is based on your perspective and visualization of the angle.

Employee Product Ownership

The poster doesn't mention the product developed by the employee. In my previous company, with 30 patents, all were in the name of the MD. However, in 1991, a product developed by Mr. Dasgupta in the company's lab using company resources got registered in his name. The company was paying nominal rates of royalty as per an agreement.