Can an employee register a patent?

• This will depend on the terms of employment of an employee.
• The general position is that an employer owns all of the intellectual property rights created by an employee in the course of employment.
• However, a key consideration is “what was the employee employed to do?”
• This will require an investigation into the role and responsibilities of the employee.
• The employee may own the intellectual property rights underlying the invention if they did not have a duty to perform the tasks that resulted in the invention.
• However if the employee had a responsibility to perform those tasks then there may be an explicit or implied term of the employment contract that assigns any underlying intellectual property rights created by the employee to the employer.